


Immortal Collections (Tumblr Fics, Ficlets, Prompts et al)

by WarriorOmen



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Compliant, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Historical, M/M, Modern, Modern Setting, Platonic Relationships, Post-Movie, Pre-Movie, Romance, Various settings, established relationships - Freeform, historical setting, prompt fills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:20:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 51
Words: 30,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarriorOmen/pseuds/WarriorOmen
Summary: I write quite a bit on tumblr, but they're all to short to be stand-alone fics. I do know that not everyone uses tumblr, however, so these are the fics collected from there. More information contained within the notes in the actual chapters.  I also do want to note that I didn't use a huge amount of tags to prevent having like, 50 of them, but if there's something specific per chapter, that information will be in the notes as well, or just at the beginning. Also rated M to give it a rating, but it ventures between G-M, in most cases.Updated: 2nd December 2020 (4 chapters added)
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 65
Kudos: 76





	1. I Must Say It (Joe/Nicky)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello Hello! As I said in the summary, these are all fics from tumblr. I've tried to provide information as is, and I did debate about separating them into series, but in the end, decided that given the length per story, it's best to have them chapter by chapter, and name the chapter. Any questions, never hesitate to ask! I try to organize by theme, character, etc per chapter and provide as much information as possible.
> 
> If you want to check out said [Tumblr](https://coffeebeannate.tumblr.com/) feel free to do so ^^.
> 
> I'll probably update this in 'chunks' depending on how frequently I write on tumblr, and then publish chapters as they come. This is cross-posting my own work, and is self beta'd.

Nicolò di Genova spends countless hours practicing. Learning. Practicing again. He tests it out whenever he gets a chance. Slow and sure. Always stealing away whatever moment to himself he can, determined to make it _right_. Determined to make it sound perfect. Because Yusuf Al-Kaysani deserves only _perfection._ Only the purest, rawest form of dedication he can muster. That he can bring.

How far they’ve come.

How long they’ve traveled.

He’s certain they are on the same page, certain that they both _know._

That they are both thinking it. That their awareness and adoration is unified. This is not where Nicolò is full of doubt.There is this suspicion, this idea, that Yusuf is gearing up to say it first. He’s so good with words. His silky, smooth voice, so raw and full of affection, of adoration.

Nicolò is convinced the man could charm a bird from a tree if he wished it. Something out of a story, a magical wondrous tale he could have dreamed of in childhood-and never gotten close enough to considering.As if his own imagination just paled in comparison.

(In truth, it did. No imagined fantasy, no thought-out or dreamed up desire came up to the wonder of Yusuf).

They are long past not being able to understand each other. A shared language flows between them with ease. Yusuf’s original tongue, and Nicolò’s comes to them both. But there is still a dedication to his actions, a devotion, a desperation.

It must be _perfect._

Nicolò is not the sort to take anything lightly, not especially when it comes to Yusuf. Years of travel and discovery had taught him so much, and it just has to be-

“Nicolò!”

_Damn him._

Nicolò is not hiding, not exactly. He’s tucked himself away in a slightly obscured nestle of greenery, far off from the campsite, and Yusuf had clearly begun to worry.

“Nicolò!” He calls again, and Nicolò has extraordinarily little time to right himself before there is looming shadow, Yusuf all broad and tall and concerned hovering over him. Haphazard, scattered words traced in sandy dirt that Nicolò hastens to cover the same moment he tries to rise to his feet. The graceless combination creating an incredibly unattractive flailing of limbs that sends him near tumbling, Yusuf catching him around the waist the last moment.

“Yusuf!” Not sure if his exclamation is thanks or desperation, “Sorry, I-“

He receives a look that has become commonplace, endearing concern and sweet adoration that makes Nicolò’s stomach twist, flop and sink.

_I would do anything for him. I WILL do anything for him._

He thinks, hard, fast. Intense.

“What are you doing?” Nicolò determined to not pout at the laughter he hears teasing the question, “Are you alright?”

_No, you fool! I am not alright! I am hopelessly, madly, desperately in love with you. I am entranced, consumed! I am sunken and floating and secure and it could not have been more perfect and my plans-_

His plans!

Nicolò had never been the wordsmith between them, probably never would be. Oh, he could speak. His words could cut, encourage, destroy, enchant.But Yusuf? Yusuf was poetry in spoken form. Yusuf made everything sound beautiful. Sound rich. Words from the heart, the soul.A caress.

“Nicolò..?” Yusuf’s prompt is now devoid of laughter, discouraged by the intense silence from the other. “What-“Before he can even attempt to speak further, Nicolò curses incoherently, spinning in Yusuf’s still taut grasp and turning them, kicking at the words scribbled carefully into the sanded dirt, pointing in exasperation at the smudging.

“I..Yusuf.” He’s using the tongue Yusuf spoke before they met, the language he knows, but has never mastered, “You see-it, this!”Yusuf is peering over his shoulder, then around Nicolò, moving to stand side-by-side, staring into the scribbling, “Nicolò is that..?” Uncertain, hopeful. “Did..”

“I love you.” He tries, panicking as the words come out jerky, harsh. His plans of smoothness, softness and care flying to the wind, confused by the interruption and hasty covering,

“I-“

Clear the throat, try again. It’s hard to swallow.

“Love..you.” His voice croaks, he wants to stab himself in the throat should it mean he never sounds again so pitiful.

His voice has always cracked slightly around Yusuf’s mother tongue. He hates himself for it, but he keeps practicing. Studious. It was important Yusuf hear this, from him, in the language he was born to. Yusuf is staring, those soft brown eyes that catch light and make Nicolò wish he could drown in them flit between the messed scrawl and Nicolò’s helpless stuttering. Slowly, they begin to water, and Nicolò grasps at his front in sudden panic, clutching man and cloth.

“Please, I do not..I wanted it to be nicer, sweeter, I practiced! I practiced for weeks in moments of solitude and-“ He’s silenced, of course he is, pleadings and flailing’s caught up in the mouth and warmth he’s become so accustomed to. Sighing and sinking before he can stop himself. Leaning into the thumb stroke, the gentle pet-like-grasp, the security.

“Nicolò..” When Yusuf finally parts them for oxygen. As if he wasn’t the very oxygen Nicolò breathed anyway. “I wanted it to be better.” Not sure if his voice conveys grumbling, “I planned it and yet-“

Like he is wont to be, Yusuf is poetry, and Nicolò is actions. Fate, it seemed, agreed with that. Yusuf, his eyes so charming, so sweet and adoring, find their familiar path, coiling their grip into Nicolò’s heart and securing there. Grounding, rooting.“It is perfect, Nicolò, it is..”He shakes his head, “You, it is you.”

Nicolò swallows, “But you..you-“ He cannot voice it, cannot ask it. He’s doing Yusuf a disservice, surely he KNOWS.

Yusuf, precious, precious Yusuf, sighs, soft, helpless, devoted.

“Oh, Nicolò.”So fond. So gentle.

“Of course, I love you, my heart. How could I not?”

Nicolò grunts-pretends to grunt, letting himself be pillowed into Yusuf’s chest, his neck, inhaling a scent he feels both warmed and comforted by.

If Yusuf notices he’s crying, he never says.

And if the kisses chase them away?

Well,

One hardly needs words, for that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the idea of Nicky saying 'I love you' first. Originally posted 7th September, 2020


	2. "I'd Know You Anywhere" (Joe/Nicky)

“Would you?” Nicky asks, eyes dancing, “Maybe I should make it more challenging, then, for next time.”

Joe laughs, low and deep, the sweetest sound Nicky’s ears can comprehend, “After 900 years, I do think that’d be quite a monstrous challenge.”

“How unfortunate, and we have to work so hard on this mission to.” Nicky murmurs, inching closer, fingers itching to touch Joe’s jacket. It’s very soft, he should know-he picked it out. Dark purple fleece lining.

“I’m sure Andy would understand,” Joe tells him, subtly pushing himself sideways, angling the open line of his jacket to Nicky’s reaching fingers, “Besides, nobody has paid us a shred of attention.”

Given ability, Nicky strokes the fleece, slow, deliberate, “Their loss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 18th September, 2020


	3. "I've Missed This." (Andy/Quynh)

It still doesn’t feel real, at times. Quynh’s touch, soft, determined, like if she lets go Andy or she will fade. Andy stares at her for hours, unflinching, unmoving, so desperate to recall her every detail. Remiss that such was lost to them for so long.

“I’ve missed you.” Andy says, “This, and all that comes with it. I could..when they took you.” Andy could remember her wrists breaking in the cuffs, how the blood had dripped from her wrists in rivers when they locked Quynh away, the doors slamming behind her.

Quynh’s furious-at fate, not at Andy, shushing her with fingers in those short black strands. “Do not fall to dwelling, not now, Andromache, not after we’ve waited so long.”

Andy swallows around the lump in her throat, some desperation she’s disappointed Quynh, that she’s somehow failed her again. “Quynh-”

“Make no mistake-my anger may never fade, but it’s direction, Andromache, has. We are here now, and we have so much to make up for. So much to recall. I will not fall, not when I’ve missed your skin, your lips, your touch.” And Andy’s turning before she can consider anymore apologies, anymore doubts, finding Quynh’s mouth again, her lips soft, sweet, healed when she’d almost expected chapped. Furiously desperate and never wishing to part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 18th September, 2020


	4. "Surprise" (Nile)

“What is that?” Nile asks, suspicious, Nicky holding a monstrosity of a cake before himself. It has layers. Six, she’d guess, very neatly stacked. Dark blue butter cream in intricate patterns, yellow sparkles and dots and- “Nicky..is that _Starry Night?”_

“Of course.” As if that’s a silly question, “Joe did the icing work, I baked it. Andy…offered words of encouragement.”

“But it’s not my birthday.” Nile said, wide eyed, scrambling in her pocket for her phone, “What is this? What is this for? It’s gorgeous! But why?”

“It’s not your birthday, but you’ve been with us for a year.” Joe explains. “It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, you deserve something nice.” Nile, freshly holding her phone, nearly drops it, swallowing slowly, eyes fixating on the cake so she can think straight. 

“You guys are too much.” But there’s more meaning behind those words than she can say clearly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 18th September, 2020.


	5. "It's A Good Look On You" (Joe/Nicky)

“Sun-kissed is a good look on you too,” Joe points out, stretching from where he’s standing in knee-deep ocean water, dripping from the tops of his curls to the waist, the rest already wave-soaked. “Except _you_ are staying on shore.”  
  
“For now,” Nicky waves a hand at him, “You could do another lap, if you’re so inclined..”  
  
Joe snorts, running a hand through his hair, shaking some of the wetness from the curls, a toss of his head sending water droplets flying, “I thought you wanted to swim together, not just watch me.”  
  
“Can’t a man multitask?” Nicky asks, stretched out on the towel, on his side, near the water, but not near enough for Joe to grab. “Besides, I was swimming earlier. I got chilled.” Making a great show of dragging his hand across his stomach, down his own hip, across the side of his thigh, Joe inhaling a little too quickly.

“..If you must.” Joe coincides defeat, another hand grazing his own chest. And oh, he must. Nicky must indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 18th September, 2020


	6. "Just Smile And Wave Boys" (The Family)

“That isn’t a smile.” Nicky hisses, Booker making some show of bearing his teeth, Quynh making a move to step on his foot before Andy stops her. Booker forces his mouth down further, attempting to cover his teeth with his lips, only looking worse for it. 

Nile rolls her eyes, stepping in front of him, “Oh let me-just keep walking, all of this is nonsense. We aren’t even undercover. Joe’s hat notwithstanding.”  
  
“What’s wrong with my hat?” Joe asked, the wide brimmed floppy felt thing covering most of his face, “I think it is quite stylish, after all.” Maybe if he was a movie star from the 40′s it would be. Nicky rolling his eyes more, about to make some comment, but Andy reminds him that his jacket is highlighter-pink, with a sideways glance, and he shuts up.

The crowd they’ve been _trying_ to keep an eye on finally parts, revealing the small party they’d been _attempting_ to get contact with for the last hour, Andy shuffling, the platform boots monstrously uncomfortable by now. She’s not even sure they fit right.

In unison, they cluster, wave and break through the crowd. Andy is going to _murder_ Copley if he ever so much as suggests a Halloween party again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 18th September, 2020


	7. "Just Breathe." (Andy&Nicky)

“I can’t.” Nicky’s gasping, choking on whatever oxygen he has, “No, I can’t stop, let me go please.” Not even drawing in a full breath, unable to swallow the sheer panic rocking him, “Andy let me go let me go, let me.”

“Nicky, stop,” She’s merciless in her hold, knowing that if she slackens her grip even a fraction-he’s gone. Gone and there’s even more to be dealing with. “Trust me, you have to trust me.” Her heart thudding in her chest. Because she hates this. She wants to let him go, let him free, but they have to wait, they have to.

“Please, Nicky, trust me, trust him.” Both of them staring in horror at the building, still burning, still blazing, “There will be no way to find you otherwise. They’re getting it under control.” Indeed, water was soaking it now from industrial grade fire hoses, Andy’s nose solid against Nicky’s neck, even though she can feel the silent screams rocking him. “Come on, I know I know.”

She’s a vice around him, where he sits on his knees in a half-launching position, movement near the edges of the wreckage catching both of their eyes, Nicky thrashing in her grip, strong, headless, Andy only giving it another minute before she loosens a hairsbreadth before Nicky can break her arms. Throwing himself at the approaching figure of Joe so fast she can barely make them out in the dark. Half-choked cries of each other’s names registering in her ears as they clutch each other in her line of sight. Feeling her own heart slowing steadily with relief. 

Now, now they can breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 18th September, 2020


	8. "It's Okay" (Joe&Nile)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content/Trigger Warning: Panic Attack (Aftermath, non descriptive)

“I’m sorry.” She gasps, again and again, “I don’t mean, I didn’t mean-”

“Nile” Joe’s hand is steady, so warm. It’s wide against her back, rubbing in slow circles that seek to calm her. “Let your heart slow, in through the nose, out through the mouth, come on. You got it, there you go, that’s it.” 

It isn’t even late at night, the light still hazy enough that she can make out shapes in the distance through the window. Nicky and Andy haven’t even returned from town. “I, I just I..”

“You never have to explain yourself when you’re not ready.” Joe says, infuriatingly patient. Endlessly sweet, steady. She envies the calm in his voice, coldness against her fingers-water, when had he gotten water?

“Drink, let the ice cube sit on your tongue a moment.” She knew that trick, but heaven’s knows she’d not been thinking of it in her anxious state, accepting the glass and doing as he told, slowly feeling her heart collect itself as she does. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 18th September, 2020


	9. Furs and Food in Loving You (Andy/Quynh)

Andromache’s flat on her stomach, arms tucked beneath her chin, eyes hazy in the way they get when fatigue is threatening. Not unlike being drunk, almost, thick limbed from alcohol. 

She’s not drunk enough, for that, of course.

Quynh is atop her, they’re laying back to back, Quynh’s head tilted up towards the never-ending canvas of stars, the sky ink black, dotted with those sparkles, moon low, glowing, lighting the world before them. The fire is dimming, but it’s still a warm enough night to not be bothersome.

“There’s goats bleating, below us, in the farm.” Quynh comments, her head against Andromache’s spine, tucked up beneath her neck, she can feel Andromache grunt beneath her, “Should we steal one?”

“Maybe, we’ve nearly finished the sheep.” 

“Could use the milk, too.”

“We could.”

Andromache hums, thoughtful, staring down the grassy hillside, if she squints, she can make out the village below. “What about an exchange?”

“An exchange? Do we have anything?”

Did they? Andromache would have to look.

“Mm..possibly. The furs, perhaps? We made some last winter, when we were snowed into the mountainside.”

“Oh those.” Quynh’s thinking, tracing the star patterns lazily with her eyes, “Is it worth a goat?”

“Do you care if it is?”

“No” Quynh smirks, Andromache can’t see her face, but she _knows_ she’s smirking, “But it would make _you_ feel a little better, would it not?”

Andromache’s heart clenches, Quynh knows her so well, “Who says I’m not doing it for you..?”

At that, the weight on her back shifts, Quynh rolling away. Andromache has only a moment to miss her weight, before she’s back, in her vision, kneeling in front of her. Hands cup her face, tilting it up.

“If you were, dear one, you would not have asked of the furs.” Quynh’s smiling, it sparkles in the moonlight. Her faces shines when it’s bathed in the low not-quite white glow. 

“Oh?” Because now Andromache is curious, propping up on her elbows, Quynh’s let her hair down, since they’d bathed earlier, combed the strands out. Andy can see the strands framing her face, they’re silky now to her touch, smooth, her fingers rubbing along the bottoms of the strands. “Then what would I have suggested?”

Quynh closes the distance between them, nosing alongside Andromache’s cheek, drawing her closer, obscuring her vision, filling her senses, overwhelming her, overtaking her.

Quynh’s so close, their lips brushing, that when she speaks, the words flow straight into Andromache, thrumming in her heart.

“Furs _and_ food.”

Oh, yes, that was right.

Quynh tried to offer a ration. Gifting both warmth and nourishment always seemed the most apropos. 

“But.” Quynh continues, low and soft. “You know I would do the same, for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 19th September, 2020


	10. "Defiance" (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shared POV.

_There’s iron and copper in his mouth. There’s iron and cooper in his hair. There’s sweat and tears and dirt rubbed into every pore, every inch of skin that’s not covered by long obscured clothing. Soot. Ash. Grime._

**_Keep going._ **

_Lifting cement limbs, finding precision in sluggishness._

_**Keep going.** _

_There’s no way to see, the air is cloudy, dark, it could be day, it could be night. Undesirable, undefinable. Undetermined._

_..Undetermined._

_**But, you can’t die. What have you to fear?** _

_**But they can.** _

**_Death is no different to them, it’s only delayed in it’s finality._ **

_Coughing, aching, **burning.**_

**Where is he?**

_Movement feels impossible. So heavy. So tired._

**_Keep going._ **

**_No solidarity until there is a reunion._ **

**_No life until I feel it breathed through him, back into myself. Cycled._ **

**_Come on._ **

**_Come on._ **

**_Lift._ **

_Has he died?_

_Something crashes. Scorches. How can there possibly be more pain? Has the body not been so pummeled, as to forget it’s touch? To dissociate from it’s existence? To think ‘perhaps, another stab, and I’ll not feel again.’_

_Resting mediation._

**Again, and again, and again-they try.**

**And try.**

**They try and take them from each other. From what they have. Jealousy, hate, confusion. Appall.**

**_But they can’t. They can’t._ **

**_He’ll crawl through every fire. Through every grassland stroked with mud deep to the ankle. Through every cold storm. No event. No person. No world where he does not find him._ **

**No matter WHAT they say. What they try.**

**How can they know of it? To know that they can feel when the other is missing? To feel the part of their soul, the shared, the interwoven, intertwined, where it rests and flutters in unison, and screams and cries when it’s apart?**

**THEY think they can break that?**

**NEVER.**

**IMPROBABLE.**

**—**

“Yusuf!”

“Nicolò!”

–

Back to back, side by side. Heat to his presence. Smoldered, darkened. Shift. Move. Cut. Slice. Defend. Defy. Believe.

Radiate. Calculate. Hit. Twist. Slice. 

Pull the Trigger.

Find him back.

Let him see teeth, see sorrow. See knowledge. Smirk. Grin. Join. 

Know.

Destruction lies in wake. Find. Grasp. Clutch Touch.

Yusuf strokes blood from Nicolò’s eye, wiping clean with the pad of his thumb to let him see. Nicolò palms dirt away from his lips, brings water to his mouth, so he can take a breath that isn’t ashen.

“They tried.”

“I know.”

There’s unified grimacing.

“Not aga-”

“Never.”

**_It’s a foolish party who believes they have the power to destroy what the Universe created. A foolish soul to hold the belief that there’s a chance._ **

**_Arrogance._ **

**_He’s mine. We are one._ **

**_(You) have no power here (whoever, whatever you are)_ **

Lips taste like ash, like grit. 

Like cooper and iron.

And underneath.

_He._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fill. Originally posted 21st September, 2020


	11. Easy Silence (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Using the Autistic Nicky tumblr headcanon verse. (Fanon verse?). Stimming.

Joe’s always enjoyed waterfronts. Rivers. Oceans. Streams. Waterbeds. It never mattered much. All of them are of equal enjoyment. Both to himself and to Nicky. 

They’re sitting side-by-side, starring out at the water, breeze and mist lightly brushing their faces, their hair, Joe’s got his arms braced out behind himself, legs kicking where they rest along the cement dyke. 

NIcky’s toying with the zippers on the upper pants pocket, braced against his thigh. It’s comforting, feeling his hand moving idly along his side. Up, down, up, down. Back and forth, back and forth, over and over again.

Above, seagulls cry for food, squealing and screeching, swooping low over head, crashing to the ground to pick at whatever they desire to eat. Whatever they want to find.

(Since they tend to eat everything from real food to garbage, it’s hardly a contest).

Joe shuffles a little, Nicky having scooted closer. He’s been silent since they left the pub, silent since Andy mentioned wanting to get some ‘things’ taken care of before they left England. Nile offering to help and steal a chance to walk through the town and think. It’s fine by Joe, he doesn’t mind Nicky’s silence. He can understand it just fine; it flows between them, steady and soft.

Up. Down. Zip. Zip.

Back and Forth.

Nicky’s face has softened, steadily relaxing where Joe had seen it going tense back in the pub, thinks it’s been tense since the moment they’d woken up in the fucking van. Feeling his blood heat, he forces it back down, tilting his head to the side to let Nicky tuck himself into the offered space, knowing he’s thankful in the soft huff let out against his throat.

Up. Down.

Zip. Zip.

Back and Forth.

A larger breeze tugs on Joe’s hair, lifting the curls, Nicky tilts his head slightly further inward, away from the coldness and into Joe’s warmth.

Up. Down. 

Zip. Zip.

Back and Forth.

When Joe’s arm slides into the space in Nicky’s jacket, braced against his shirt and lower back, his fingers flex, drawing him in more. Nicky’s hand stills only a moment, before he sighs, nuzzles closer and continues.

Up. Down. 

Zip. Zip.

Back and Forth.

_Love you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 22nd September, 2020


	12. Disagreement (Joe/Nicky)

It wasn’t like they’d never _fought_ before-they had. They’d had several arguments over the last few centuries. (Though none of _those_ resulted in murder since at least the 12th century). Some could be bad, some could be nonsensical. Others born purely out of difficult environment, exhaustion and combating factors that neither could control and made both irritable. They’d long succeeded beyond any fighting making them insecure; worried it might be the end of what they had. But this?

This was..strange. This was somehow both incomprehensible and incredibly frustrating, and Nicky could feel himself shutting down in frustration, Joe’s voice-which kept threatening to climb, wavering between shouting and harsh low tone, a sign that this disagreement was about to become a full-blown fight if neither of them could figure something out, at some point. Neither of them could really even recall what the original catalyst was, but whatever it had been had spurned far beyond into something greater.

For weeks, they’d been working. Non-stop, no matter what they did, it was just endless. So much had decided to happen in such a short space of time. Over and over. Joe knew Nicky had probably amassed, at best, around four hours sleep the last six days, (he never slept well on mission), and Joe himself was wearing down. Low food, lower reserves. Tight quarters. It was just so much. And Nicky had done something, turned himself a certain way while cleaning their guns yet again and spilled half a bottle of gun oil across the floor. A dirt floor, impossible to retain any of the oil that had spilled. And while it wasn’t a huge deal, he’d cursed, putting it up right, and Joe had commented on how it was unfortunate, and Nicky had just gone taut, making snippy comments and shaking. 

That had lead to further arguing, because they were tired, congested, didn’t know what day it was and couldn’t even get a handle on when they’d be free again. These types of missions, in the middle of nowhereville civilization remote country, where moments and details changed by the second, were agitating already. Moreso when there really seemed to be no end in sight, they’d not bathed in a week or more and food was low. Not to mention water. 

Nicky’s gone silent, his shirt sticking to his chest from where he’d been mindlessly rumpling it, dust covering his hands now, dust in his hair, anxiety in his posture. It halts whatever retort Joe had festering on the tip of his tongue, seeing his husband that way, knowing that the bagged blue-green eyes and tense posture are not, and never were directed at him, and he caves. It’s too damned hot and gross to be touching, but Joe truly doesn’t care. Even if their clothes feel like little more than sweat-soaked rags at this point. Nicky sighing in defeat and setting the guns cleaning cloth aside-its black now, it used to be blue, and folding himself into the space Joe creates.

“I stink.” He mumbles, Joe huffing into his hair, “I’m aware, I fare no better. I’m sorry, my love I-”

“No, I..this is exhausting.” 

Joe has never agreed with anything more, “We should have some confirmation soon, some more information where we can move out, we can do it. We can.”

Nicky twitches, Joe can feel it in his arms, the way he’s tensing, soothing him with a hand across his back, “Or it could be longer, I just wish we had some idea of what we are doing. These types..Joe, things are blurring out there.”

Nicky is not wrong, and they both know it. Which was what they were also waiting on, to make sure they had not done more harm than good. 

“Nicky, you need to sleep.” Joe says, carefully, “Your grip on your sniper shakes now.” 

As expected, Nicky tenses further-being off his game on his job costs lives, and Nicky would _never_ have that. It’s not ego, it’s life or death, and Joe has always promised to be truthful with him. “I know..but I-”

Joe shushes him, sitting down flat on the floor, legs spread, letting Nicky sit facing him, head on his stomach, legs splayed out. Nicky’s sniper close to their legs, his handgun beside Joe’s thigh, longsword against the sniper.

Joe reaches for his scimitar, letting it sit beside his hand, an arm around Nicky’s back, alert.

“Sleep.” Joe says, reversing their most familiar of positions, Nicky tensing once, again, mouthing wordless thanks against Joe’s stomach, before starting to drift. Sheer exhaustion taking over.

Joe waits. And hopes this damned mission has some end in sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 23rd September, 2020


	13. "Now Isn't the Time to Laugh" (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of bets/gambling.

On the contrary, now was an _excellent_ time to laugh. How could now be anything but an _incredibly opportunistic moment_ to laugh? How could there ever be something as _glorious_ as not laughing at this?

“You can spend the rest of our time here on that shitty lime-green couch.” Nicky warns, which is just funnier to Joe as he says it, carefully working on helping him, “No, I won’t, you can’t sleep without me next to you. You’ll just toss and turn all night long and grumble and curse.” Joe sings into his ear, Nicky grumbling predictably at him, “We really _really_ need to work on your little habit there though, darling.”

Nicky gives him an offended huff, staring down into the empty void where money had once sat (Joe still had some, it was fine), but those coins had been from another country and..truly Nicky had forgotten what time period, or area, in particular. Across from them, the bar owner is giving Joe some warning glances, and Joe nods back, gently coaxing Nicky from his chair, letting him grouse into his shoulder.

“It is not a _habit.”_ he retorts, voice petulant. Joe smirking and wishing they were back in the apartment so he could kiss the scowl from his face. “It is it not-” Nicky’s voice going lower, muttering under his breath. Joe using the cover of Nicky being drunk (he wasn’t) to excuse them being so closely embraced. 

“You just cannot help yourself with those bets, and you never learn.” And Nicky’s not _willing_ to admit Joe is right, but that’s okay, the grouchy gaze Joe gets in return is worth it, and he sneaks a kiss when they’re briefly obscured by a passing bus, the frown Nicky bore slowly melting to a tender, overjoyed smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 23rd September, 2020


	14. Wind (Andy/Quynh)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References possible PTSD (Slight). Trauma.

Quynh doesn’t like wind much. Wind, something that used to be so _freeing, so charismatic_ and so full of promising life, new beginnings, changing directions, open earth is now a **sullied, scarred reminder.** There was wind that day, wind near the water. Wind felt for the first time since being chained, since being captured, wind when the air hit her face as the dragged her, pulled her, locked.

It took so long after her escape, after her renewed freedom to not shudder at it. To not wish to turn her face and scream, to not hide her head in a hat, a scarf, anything to keep the wind from _touching her._ Anything to keep from feeling that dreadful existence, where the water below her beckoned it’s centuries long punishment. Where it called out, and **_screamed._**

Time has passed. _So much fucking time._ Andromache-she’s Andy now, Quynh is still getting used to it, in her new _mortality_ (oh such bitter irony), to see how Quynh would turn her face away, how she’d hiss when the wind was too harsh, and how she’d tremble. Andy, with her sunglasses, her hats, her resolution, had made it something bearable, something she could face again. Something that makes her see the wind again, with those renewed changes coming to light. It’s Andy’s arms, so familiar once more, her shoulder a steely wall against the cursed breeze, the solid recollection that no matter how that wind chooses to blow, they _won._

It’s how tonight, in a threatening storm, Quynh can take solace, can shuffle herself closer to the already given spot in Andy’s shoulder, a hand covering her cheek as they sit, raindrops that should be touching Quynh’s cheek blockaded by Andy’s strong hand. Quynh has no doubt that if Andy could bring mother nature down herself, she would.

“Andromache, I-” _Thank you, thank you, I feel things I cannot understand. There’s rage and terror within. There’s disquiet in my heart, ice in my veins and fire in my bones. And my love, my love, you’re here all the same._ Andy only hums, gentle lips to her head, hand splaying more widely across her cheek, to provide it’s coverage. “Quynh, my darling love, I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 23rd September, 2020


	15. "Don't Tell the Others" (Andy&Nile)

This was bullshit. And if it wasn’t bullshit yet then it was definitely going to _become_ bullshit. Andy sneaking off, Nile having followed her because _of course she did._ Andy putting a finger to her lips and shaking her head-she’d known she was being followed, Nile wonders if Andy just deliberately let her. 

“Andy, they’re not-they’re going to find out.” Nile said, sitting down beside her on the slightly too dry grass, (it actually _crunches_ when Nile sits), Andy tossing another knife into the tree across from them. Something large, possibly oak, two other knives already embedded within. 

“Of fuckin’ course they’re going to find out” Andy snorts, a bottle against her stomach-it’s half-empty, and Nile can’t get a smell from it, “Them finding out..it doesn’t matter, that’s not the issue, I just need to _not_ be smothered for five seconds by them.” Nile frowning, biting into her cheek, “They’re just worried, you’re all shaken, all of you.”

Andy snorts, the knife slowly spinning in her grasp. Nile slides the knife from her grip, holding it herself, ignoring Andy’s brow-raise of protest as she tosses it herself, the knife landing in between the center of the other two. Leaning back with a semi-satisfied grin. “You’re not being smothered, Andy. If anything, you’re being the opposite of smothered right now. Once we joined back up, it’s not, they’re giving you space.” But Andy only snorts, “No, to some it’d not look to be smothering, but I _know them.”_

Nile supposed that was true, drawing her knees into her chest, considering. “So..what? You just take off whenever and hope they don’t follow? Why not just ask for space?” Nile’s not following Andy’s train of thought here, not exactly. Andy sighing and letting her head rest against the tree, saying nothing. Nile frowns futher, knowing that once Andy has decided that a conversation is over-that is it.

–

Nile gets her answer later that night. 

She’d had dinner with the others (Andy had opted out) and had gone off to take a shower and read, figuring that everyone else might want to do their own thing, given the strange, budding energy of the night. At some point, she’d fallen asleep, and when she’d woken at around half past one, Andy’s bed next to hers was still empty.

Not _that_ uncommon, but Nile’s concerned anyway. She shuffles from her own, entering the hallway, peeking her head into Joe and Nicky’s room. When she see’s _that_ is also empty, she feels the tell-tale signs of concern threading, adrenaline kicking in.

Living room-empty.

Kitchen-empty.

Closet (hey she checked anyway)-empty.

Bathroom-empty.

Now more than concerned, Nile is about to go back and grab one of the house weapons, when the porchlight catches her eye. The glass door is open-but the screens closed, and there’s a _pile_ on the porch. A pile of blankets, and bodies. Nile lets her eyes adjust, and can make out, somewhat, that the other three are indeed, all together, and apparently contorted into some sort of human anthill. 

No, not an anthill, they’re all laying together in a giant cuddle, Andy tucked up into the middle, deeply asleep. Nile hasn’t seen her that serene looking in a while, Nicky’s arm is draped loosely around her back, Joe’s arm atop his. It doesn’t look _that_ comfortable, but somehow does all the same.

Nile nearly jumps when Nicky’s eye opens, following the pathway to where Nile stands, moving his head just so. Nile approaches the pile, and sinks down near the end of it all, sort of tucked up along Andy’s side slightly further down, Nicky using some kind of weird acrobatic movement to grab the other blanket. 

_Well._ Nile thinks, _Maybe she doesn’t mind being smothered when it’s on her terms, then._ Before she slowly falls back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 23rd September, 2020


	16. Fluent Italian (Joe/Nicky)

This was absolutely _ridiculous to the core_ and Nicky could not possibly have been more delighted by it. Forcing back the laugher bubbling in his throat, both charmed and amused, the waitress probably assuming his reaction to be bashfulness at the smoothness of Joe’s words. Maybe she thought this was a first date, or maybe a second. Maybe to her it was an attempt at being suave.

Nicky knew differently, of course. Though it was hard for the world at large to look at him and Joe sometimes and realize ‘that first date was 900 years ago’, but that only made it more interesting, in his mind. 

Joe’s always made languages sound lovely, taking to them with ease, willfully adapting each word to the right infliction of his tone, the perfect cadence set by his tongue, his jaw, enunciating and making Nicky’s spine liquify _just right. Slow, smooth, passionate._ And, Nicky realizes, the waitresses eyes turning to him now, _incredibly distracting._

Nicky orders, carefully, keeping his tone neutral, eyes bright, watching the movement of her short, wavy brown hair as she jots everything down, excusing herself a moment later. Nicky reaching out across the table to take Joe’s hand, to kiss the knuckles presented, hovering near the two rings Joe never takes off. Silver, shiny and _bright._

“Such a delight you are.” He tells him, low and fond against his skin, “She must think you’re trying to woo me, if only she knew.” Relishing in the spark Joe’s dark brown eyes flicker with, content and warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 25th September, 2020


	17. Night (Lykon)

Night was something he’d never tire of. Night was always one of the more fascinating landscapes to him. To stare at the sky and see a world so far beyond comprehension, making the land beneath his feet, his back, his legs, seem so quaint. So small, so..he’d say _insignificant_ but that felt like a disservice to all that he did. 

Still, that sprawling sky called to him, drew him in. The shining of the moon, the glittering of stars, too may to ever possibly hope to count. Dotting the sky, glittering, shining, _calling._

He was not alone in this observation, of course. Andromache, Quynh, they both appreciated the night sky just as much. But they were already sleeping, wrapped up in their tent. He’d felt restless, himself, declining to bed down right away. 

So he laid, outstretched, enjoying in his favourited past time. Was there a higher power? Were there several? None of them, himself, Andromache and Quynh knew what made them as they were, but surely it had a reason. Surely there was something in control? His childhood, his early life, all seemed so _distant_ at the time. Landscapes that shifted, changed, altered. 

His sky is strong, radiant, and while it never answers his silent questions, it never wavers, fades, nor changes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Meme Prompt Fill. Originally posted 25th September, 2020


	18. Hair (Joe/Nicky)

It’s the noise that wakes him, though it’s not that abnormal to hear sounds where they camp out, the particularities of said sound is what has Nicolò blinking his eyes open and forcing consciousness to come.

“Yusuf?” His fellow ‘death untouched’ companion across the fire from him, curled up, back to Nicolò, though the Genovian man can see clearly there is shaking beneath his thin blanket, as if he’s in a dream he cannot escape from. And perhaps that is it, perhaps that is the case, but Nicolò hates to hear him suffering, even if he does not yet know what is to come of himself and Yusuf.

They had been working slowly, testing language, testing companionship, travelling. Nicolò could feel the distinct string-taut pressure around his heart even looking across the fire now, the quickening of his pulse before he (yet again) chastises himself for such thinking. He’s not _immune_ to Yusuf’s beauty, intelligence, talent. Not _immune_ to how fascinating watching his hands, strong and calloused, but somehow so gentle and firm, clasping ropes, breaking meat into sizeable pieces for cooking. His smooth, serene voice a warm blanket as he tells Nicolò of the charcoal he misses, masses of sketches from his time in the past, his travels, his home. Counting out the stars and losing Nicolò to hours of talking.

Nicolò thought, for sure, that he’d never tire of him.

A whimper jerks him from the thoughts he’s fallen down into (yet again) shoving his own blanket off and crawling around the space between them, mindful of the fire, swallowing harshly in his throat.

He’s woken him before, but there’s something so tender in the way he can just see the furrow of brow in the dark, the slight sheen of sweat in his curls. His hand hovering just over the shoulder, trying again.

“Yusuf..?”

Nothing, Yusuf is deeply asleep, as disturbed as it is.

“Yusuf..Yusuf?” Nicolò finally brings his hand down, gentle, careful, and Yusuf begins to start beneath his touch. Nicolò swallows around the radiating pulsing in his ears, the swimming in his head.

“Nicolò?” Yusuf asks, his voice sluggish and slurred, “Is there trouble?”

“You were..dreaming” Nicolò tries, “It seemed unpleasant.”

Something sparks in Yusuf’s eyes, something Nicolò can’t read in such low light. Apprehension? Delight?

“You come then, to save me from my subconscious terrors, Nicolò?” And Nicolò realizes the tone is almost fond, if more drenched in curiosity. He sighs, and Nicolò almost feels guilty for no reason he can discern, “I’m sorry to have woken you.” Yusuf says, only then registering that Nicolò has not moved his hand.

He will move it, the question in Yusuf’s eyes is enough, he tells himself that. He’ll move. He can move any second he demands, he’s in complete control of his body. He is not a man beholden to random jerks of limbs.

“Nicolò?” Yusuf finally shifts, the movement forces Nicolò ‘s hand to fall away, Yusuf staring at him, Nicolò angled above as Yusuf moves to sit semi-raised. “Are you well?”

The question draws hysterical laughter from Nicolò ‘s throat, which he quickly swallows in distress, eyes cast aside, staring into the _extremely compelling_ sand nearby.

“I am sorry, forgive me. I am not entirely with consciousness myself, Yusuf.”

Yusuf makes a sound, a sound Nicolò cannot understand, but it’s the suddenness of a hand finding his own that brings Nicolò crashing back to the moment so hard he feels he’s been bucked from a horse.

Yusuf is moving further still, it is the most they’ve touched since the last death. The death when, once Nicolò had woken _again_ it was to the dark brown gaze he’d come to know staring down at him, extending a hand, exhausted, weary and cautious.

Since then, even when they spoke, slept or bathe, they’d kept touch minimal. Necessary hand bumps, accidental ventures into one another’s personal space. But never _this._ There’s an intimacy to it that nearly has Nicolò breathless, staring down with some kind of wonder into Yusuf’s placating, curious gaze.

He doesn’t know why they choose the position they do, but Nicolò nearly screams when Yusuf’s head pillows in his lap, almost a challenge, the hand still clasping his own intertwining to his own fingers, and everything feels too hot, too tight, despite the coolness of the air around them.

Almost unconsciously (and Nicolò cannot fathom why he chooses what he does), his fingers not held within Yusuf’s find the ends of his hair, so coiled and curled, and stroke, once. Yusuf goes rigid, still and stiff. But when Nicolò starts to mutter an apology, to lift his hand, Yusuf clasps their opposite, interwoven fingers tighter.

“No, please do not stop,Nicolò “

He swallows, allowing his fingers to fall back into the strands. “Yusuf..”

There is silence after that, broken only by Yusuf’s contented hums, the gentle slide of Nicolò ‘s fingers through his hair, the heaviness of Yusuf’s head against his legs grounding him. The texture is fascinating. Smooth, silky, and so intricately curled, so unlike Nicolò ‘s own.

Yusuf goes further lax the more Nicolò works his fingers, and when they finally find scalp, Nicolò swears he moans.

The sound goes straight through him, dragging a whimper from his own throat. But as fast as it came, it’s gone, and slowly, Yusuf falls back to sleep. Nicolò ‘s own eyes growing heavier the more he moves his fingers, until he’s unconsciously in sync to Yusuf’s breathing.

Eventually, he too, drifts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliche Tropes and Prompts Fill. Originally posted 27th September, 2020


	19. 2 Am (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Trauma, Angst, Plausible PTSD

They could handle being apart. It was not as though they spend every moment non-functional when not in the immediate space of the other, quite the opposite. Over the centuries there had been plenty of times where they’d been apart for time. It could vary and really, the worst bit about it was that they had trouble sleeping solo.

Still-not insufferable to the point of non-functional or anything.

Except that wasn’t always the case.

Like most things in life, sometimes things just _happened._ And it was impossible to predict how one would react when taken by surprise.

So to speak.

They had been split up for around four days when Joe’s phone wakes him from his doze, the pillow he’s molded around a very bad mockery of Nicky’s solid weight, scrambling in the dark for the obnoxious thing, fumbling with it.

He doesn’t have to look at the screen to know who it is that is calling, sleep fogged brain getting online enough to accept the call.

“Nicky?”

On the other end is the sound of something that Joe can’t distinguish, but he can register heavy, broken breathing and something clattering. It sounds like glass i the distance, and it wakes Joe up fully.

“Nico? Are you there?”

“Yusuf.” Nicky breathes into the thing, “Sorry, I don’t want..fuck.”

He’s speaking Italian, fast and stressed, and Joe’s already rolling out of bed, fumbling for the lamp and his pants at the same time, “Where are you?” He doesn’t bother to ask what it is that’s happened. He can hear the hitching through the speaker, as if Nicky’s trying to figure that out himself.

He gives him as best of a location as he can, and Joe inquires about his phone battery and where the nearest safe zone is. Nicky assures him nobody is nearby, and he’s around his sniper.

The sniper gives Joe pause, frowning into the phone as he tugs his boots on. “Are you safe?”

“Just..get here.” Nicky says, the call ending.

–

Joe tends to obey things called speed limits, lights, stop signs.

Not so much now.

It’s dark, pitch black, and the location Nicky gave him is a dense one. He can see the issue soon enough, though and he braces himself steadily, wishing he could risk calling Nicky to confirm his location. 

He’s on alert, the scimitar sheathed, but ready to be unsheathed the second it’s needed. However, that’s proven to be unnecessary.

There’s nothing there.

No people, no blood, there is just..nothing. Maybe it’s the dark, maybe it’s the fact that the location is as dense as it is. But as Joe continues to comb through, he see’s only the abandoned expanse, gates and empty lots.

Confused, Joe looks up, looking around for where Nicky might’ve chosen to perch, and soon enough spots a tall building overlooking the parking lot.

It’s a scary thing, all one or two windows and straight up, almost too thin looking to be a building.

He finds Nicky huddled up in position at the top floor. If he saw Joe there in the lot, he doesn’t say.

Joe steps into the room, Nicky hears him and slowly sets the sniper aside. “Yusuf.”

Joe moves to his side, Nicky’s covered in sweat, shaking and trembling. “There was nothing here.” Before Joe can ask, Nicky’s tactical gear is clean, but he’s shaking so hard. As if he’s cold. “And yet..”

Something else occurs to Joe.

‘Nicky..you weren’t meant to snipe this.” They’d been told to get intel, Nicky sniping without Joe spotting was not only abnormal, but incredibly dangerous.

His husband’s brow furrows, and Nicky turns to glance at him, looking guilty. “No, but I thought I had something, I thought maybe..but there was nothing, Joe, there was nothing. There was nobody..”

“How long have you been out here?” Joe asks, his hand carding through Nicky’s sweaty brow.

‘I don’t know.”

“Come on” Joe helps him to his feet, “Let’s go.”

—

Nicky accepts a bath, though the most he does is sit there looking dazed and confused, glassy-eyed and far away. But when Joe goes to dry him off, Nicky lets out a noise that borders a strangled wail, thudding his head into Joe’s chest, accepting the arms that instantly go around him.

“It was the first time I’ve worked without you since..”

He doesn’t say it, doesn’t have to, his hand finds the back of his own head, as if he’s meant to find a hole in there. Joe steadies himself, firmly palming the back of his skull to reassure him that no, it’s fine.

It’s far from fine, but he’s not..he’s solid. Together.

“I don’t know what happened.’ Nicky continues, ‘But for..I was distracted, maybe? I don’t know. Everything had gotten dark and I thought I heard people talking and I thought I’d seen something but I hadn’t. I sat in that lot..and maybe I dozed off, dreamed..but something had me convinced, something had me..”

He shakes himself, Joe thumbing the base of his neck. “I’m not..I think I did doze off, yes.” He tries. ‘And you weren’t there when I woke up and it was dark and my head was cold and everything felt so _wrong_ and out of order and I thought perhaps they’d taken you and-”

And by the time Joe found him there he was, trying to snipe a non-existent enemy. “And at some point..I got the idea to call you..I guess.”

It doesn’t make logical sense. It can’t make logical sense. The brain is something that has sort of been beyond the both of them. Even with all their experiences, knowledge, discoveries, it still takes time. It still takes them by surprise.

“I’m right here.” Joe promises, keeping the anger to a low simmer in his chest. The memories, compounded with Nicky suffering are enough to bring him to instant fuming.

And while Nicky would understand, and join him within it, it would not help.

“You’re safe.” Joe says, carefully, “My heart, I’m right here.”

Nicky nods. “Feels so stupid now, whatever it was.”

“No.” Joe’s tone is firm as he says it. “Never. There is nothing stupid about you, or this.” A chaste kiss finding Nicky’s forehead. “Come, to bed.”

—  
  
In the morning, Joe tells Andy through a quick text that he and Nicky are taking themselves off the mission, temporarily. Because Nicky would never allow for anything long-term. 

“We do good, Joe.” He tells him, endlessly, effectively. A belief that roots him to his core and keeps them both going in this direction.

But that doesn’t mean that for now, Joe can drape himself back over Nicky’s sleeping back, drag him into his chest, and protect them both from the world a little while longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliche Tropes and Prompts Fill. Originally posted 27th September, 2020


	20. Scared And Won't Admit It (Joe/Nicky, Andromache/Quynh)

It’s dark.

Correction, it’s so dark the night has completely blanketed the surrounding area within it. There is no light for miles. The cloud soaked sky dense and compact, preventing even the stars and moonlight from penetrating.

They have no real light, either. They’d been travelling, unable to make a fire due to movement, and there was so little light visible that they’d not even know where to sit down and check their packs for the necessary tools.

It’s eerie, in the quiet of it all.

No animals.

No foot traffic.

No city. No town. No village. 

Nothing.

It was as if they’d been dumped in a cavernous black hole in the ground and buried. Frightening in the depth, the stillness of it.

“Have you ever seen it so dark outside?” Yusuf questions, from somewhere near Nicolò’s right side. Or left, it’s impossible to tell.

“No.” Nicolò admits, “Never, nothing like this, no. It is very dark.”

“Maybe the world ended and we’re the only one’s left.” Quynh interjects from possibly behind them, cryptic as ever.

“Nah, if the world ends it’s just going to explode. This is far too frighteningly normal.” Andromache adds, “Or if it _plans_ to end I’d rather have it end with _something_ more remarkable than this pitch black nothingness.”

“Is that now how the end of the world works?” Yusuf asks, “Is it not scarier in the mundanity of it all?”

“Depends on your idea of scary.” Quynh comments, “Everyone fears different things.”

“But at our cores people have similar base fears.” Nicolò finally adds, “But we’re all sort of missing the point-what do we do _now?”_

“Wait it out.” Andromache says, as if that’s the most obvious thing.

“So we just..sit here?” Nicolò questions, a little suspect, “Suppose it rains? We’ve not set a shelter, we can’t see to make a fire. Just, sit?”

“We’ll dry.” Quynh yawns, “Not like we’ve ever fallen asleep and woken up wet before.” An unseen, devious smirk obscured by their current pitch black state. Though her companions understand her just fine.

Nicolò and Yusuf groan in unison, Yusuf _swears_ he can hear Andromache shoving her in the dark. A fitful task if she can actually see her.

“You have competition for your worst jokes, Yusuf.” Nicolò jibes, getting an affronted huff from somewhere near himself. 

“I am far more poetic than anything that might come out of Quynh’s mouth.” He complains, Quynh piping up, “Is that a challenge, Yusuf?”

“What _to you,_ is not considered so?”

“Precisely.” A distant ‘thud’ indicating that she has sat herself down, a following shout confirming that she has dragged Andromache down with her.

Yusuf stops, groping out blindly in the pitch black to find Nicolò’s hand, Nicolò leaning himself sideways to try and scramble to find any purchase as Yusuf tugs them down. There’s distant laughter, thudding and cursing, until the foursome somehow manage to rearrange themselves into a pile, Yusuf with his legs spread out, Nicolò between them, braced against his chest, Yusuf shoulder-to-shoulder with Quynh, Andromache tucked up alongside her, head pressed into Quynh’s shoulder and chest. Compressed, but comfortable.

There’s no sound for a long moment, all of them only hearing each other’s breathing, but the sky’s quiet, non-threatening despite it’s heaviness.

Fear is strange, to them. They know their fates are uncertain, but can be bold in circumstances where others may not be. The unknowing, the _still darkness_ is eerie though, and none of them seem willing to admit it first. 

Or rather, none of them really know how to gage it.

Nicolò moves first, sliding his fingers through Yusuf’s, held against his own stomach. Quynh does the same for Andromache, and Andromache reaches her free hand outwards, across herself, and takes up Nicolò ‘s free one. Quynh groping in the dark, muttering about Yusuf hiding his, before he’s able to grasp hers.

Linked, secure, they settle.

And wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliche Tropes and Prompts Fill. Originally posted 30th September, 2020


	21. Promise Me (Joe/Nicky)

“You agonize me.”

It’s a discussion they’ve had so many times before. It’s inevitable, they can’t help but have such discussions, no matter how painful each one is. No matter the century, the decade, the _day,_ there is no way to make such a talk easier on either of them. 

“I know.”

“Then why..?” Nicky’s voice cracks at the edges, fractures, frays, “Why now..? Why must we have this talk? You’re healing, we’ve had it before. There is no need-”

Joe can’t be sure either, what brought this on. Every so often, inevitably, they cycle into it.

It could be from a mission, it could be from one of those periods of history where there is so much death in the world that neither of them can feel confident about it. Where it brings their uncertain mortality to the forefront, again, and again.

And sometimes, they both fall to periods of extreme melancholy. Andy was not the only one who had taken to brooding at times, to cynicism. It affects them all, in different ways.

“I have to be sure.” Joe says, “I have to know, that you’ll not suffer without me.”

Nicky _hisses_ at him. “You ask impossible questions, impossible scenarios, _we have been **over** this, Yusuf. You know it’s improbable I could feel-”_

Joe cuts him off, abruptly, leaning himself forward in his chair, space crossed over the table, hands flat to wood, kissing Nicky without looking. Nicky’s returning kiss is biting, angry, _scared._

Neither of them have raised their voices, neither of them have accused the other with bitter names and biting remarks. They never argue in that manner, and this is a shared argument. There’s dual tears, mingling, caressing their cheeks in unison, molding where their mouths meet. Salty.

“I don’t ask if of you, when I know of the answer.” Nicky says, voice shaky, quavering, putting mere millimeters between their mouths. “We **know** the truth, Yusuf.”

Joe is aware. Nicky is right, they do know.

“Say it.” Nicky’s hand fist in his collar, desperate, secure, and Joe knows he won’t let go until he responds. Joe’s skin thrums beneath his fingers, even though Nicky is only grasping cloth, not flesh.

“Yusuf.”

“We came into this together, blade by blade; fate made it so, fate end..ends it so.”

“Nobody takes you from me, but me.” Nicky finishes, “Right, Yusuf? Be it God or Nature, _**nobody, no thing. No fate**._”

Yusuf shudders. He knows it’s true. It’s part of this discussion. Of all of them, they are the only two who crossed into this strange immortality together. Neither believe that to be by accident.

_Stab by stab_

_Thrust by thrust_

_Cut by cut_

_Hand by hand_

_Kiss by kiss_

_Touch by touch_

_Embrace._

_The only master of your fate, is me, my love, my heart._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt List. Angst Category. Originally posted 4th October, 2020


	22. Pet Names and Hugs (Andy/Quynh, Joe/Nicky)

Two couples.

Two times

Two scenarios.

_**Andromache and Quynh, So Long Ago.** _

“A..hug?”

Language is still challenging, of course. Quynh seems uncomfortable with asking, like she doesn’t know what to do with such an idea. They have hugged before, of course. Kissed before. There’s little that is questionable. But Andromache is..resolutely _stubborn_ about asking for any type of affection. If she wants affection, she initiates it. At times, it seems there is a wall between them, one crafted by Andromache’s own undeniable belief that sharing her thoughts when they do not pertain to battle is somehow unacceptable.

Like if she exposes such a part of herself, she’ll lose it all. 

Perhaps. Quynh is not sure what all she fears. She has heard of Andromache’s earlier years. When they’d met, and she had explained it. How they were both of this..strangeness.

“A hug.” Quynh says, again, motioning with her arms. “They feel nice, feel good. Comforting.” The words come out rough, because Quynh rarely has trouble announcing her thoughts herself. Though it does not mean those thoughts are always completely straight forward.

“Why..” Andromache furrows her brow, there’s something across her face, panic, maybe? Quynh dislikes this. Andromache panicking is the last thing she desires from this question.

Resolution, then.

She steps forward, snatching Andromache up in her arms, squeezing. The hug is one they know, furious and tight. There’s victory when Andromache sags.

“You are a pumpkin.” Quynh says, startling a confused laugh from Andromache, “A pumpkin?”

“Pumpkin” Quynh smirks into her ear and neck, “All hard on the outside, but so soft on the inside, provided someone you trust is holding the knife.”

_**Joe and Nicky, Mid 20th Century** _

“..You’re asking me?”

Normally, if Nicky wants a hug, Joe just hugs him. They’ve long since surpassed the need for words most times, and it’s surprising to hear Joe ask him like this. Surprising enough that he spins around in the hard plastic chair, scanning Joe to make absolutely sure that his husband hasn’t been replaced by some odd imposter.

“What?” Joe asks, hands sliding into the pockets of his pants. Something obnoxiously polyester, “Can I not throw you for a loop, at times?”

Nicky raises the pen he’s been holding, flicking it’s tip in the general direction of Joe’s distracting chest. Shirts were so infuriatingly (wonderfully) tight in this decade.

“You’re up to something.” Nicky determines, launching himself from the chair, all cat like. Sinewy, and strong. “You’re up to something devious. Have I been neglecting you so much lately?”

“I cannot begin to imagine what you might be fathoming in that pretty head of yours, Nico.”

“Ah now see-” Nicky crosses the space, the carpet soft beneath his socked feet, “You want that trick to work, try it on someone who hasn’t been married to you for over eight centuries.” 

Joe takes up the residence Nicky offers, sliding his arms about his waist, “Now now, buttercup, surely you must realize, that is what makes it fun. That you know and that tricking you is such a challenge.”

Nicky noses at him, inhaling the slightly too sharp cologne, nose grazing along Joe’s beard, humming contently in the embrace. “Is that so?”

Joe hums in return, their chests thrum with the combined movement. 

Nicky never did actually find out what Joe was up to, and had to conclude that it was possibly nothing at all.

Later, he does have some space of mind to roll over in bed, stare at Joe with a slightly glassy eyed expression, and ask,

“Buttercup?”

Joe only chuckles, Nicky accepting, perhaps, that it’s some new term of endearment that has made it’s way into society.

It’s quite cute, he thinks, distractedly, Joe’s head disappearing under the blanket and cutting all higher thinking off entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fill. Orignally posted 4th October, 2020


	23. Distracted Darts (Andy/Quynh)

“Don’t you think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

Andy’s voice is teasing, no bite to it at all. Quynh letting out an appalled sound against her neck. “I’m sure I have not a clue what you mean, Andy.”

“Sounds like the appropriate level of deviousness that I’ve come to expect and know of you.” A giddiness to Andy’s tone she’s not felt in _so long._ Having Quynh back, having _this_ again..it’s almost too much to bear with it’s goodness.

It had been rough, at first, and there were hiccups, but this moment? This right now? It is good. Good and well and Andy feels feather light, awe-struck and so truly, endlessly thankful.

“You can still throw.” Quynh points out, the dart board staring at them both, Andy’s hand is not trembling, nor twitching. She’s too well practiced for that. But Quynh is _deliciously distracting._ Soft lips barely touching the edge of forceful. Andy shivering with the knowledge of how that could change the moment Quynh desired it be so.

Andy throws the dart as Quynh lands a particular sensitive spot right at the juncture of shoulder blade and neck, lips ghosting. So teasingly gentle that Andy can barely feel it.

The dart, predictably, lands somewhere in the outer rings, just as the last two Andy tossed had.

“You play dirty.” Andy quips, tilting her head back, arm finding some purchase behind herself, against Quynh’s hip.

Quynh’s darts, of course, are all either bullseye or inner ring, the cheater.

“Do I?” Her voice, so smooth, so full of false innocence, that Andy nearly stumbles, leaning into the arm that finds it’s way around her stomach.

“You do, you know you do. Always taking people off-guard, coming from nowhere, out of the shadows, straight into the fray..”

Quynh tuts, pressing the last dart into Andy’s palm, skirting her fingers up the skin of her arm, trailing, teasing.

“Throw the last dart, Andromache.”

She does-she misses terribly. The tip of the dart just shy of hitting the wall, hanging on for dear life to the edges of the biggest and most outer ring.

“Oh dear.” Quynh tuts again, fingers slipping about Andy’s wrist. “I suppose I win.”

Andy huffs, backing up, tilting her head back so they can be eye-to-eye, looking upside-down at Quynh, the angle awkward, but perfect.

“More than darts, I’d say.”

“Hmm.” Quynh’s fingers, so strong and secure, find purchase at the side of her cheek, her jaw. “S’what I deserve, no?”

Yes.

Of course.

 _“You deserve all the victories your heart can contain.”_ Andy thinks, never able to put such thoughts into words, but knowing, firmly, that Quynh hears her loud and clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fill. Originally posted 5th October, 2020


	24. Eye Colour Soulmates (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soulmate AU

**_“If a person is destined to have a soulmate in this life, they will find that one of their eyes has changed colour, reflecting the colour of their anticipated soulmate.  
_ **

**_For this to occur, the two must be in close proximity to one another (most studies say no less than several miles, but others claim that there have been some variations), and that, upon meeting, the eyes will revert to normal._ **

**_In some legendary, and notable cases, the eye colours will remain heterochromatic for the rest of their lives._ **

**_Of course, keep in mind that these stories are not always the same, and not every couple has a soulmate status. And that there is nothing less valid about non-soulmate couples.”_ **

“Nicky?”

Nicky looked up, hastily closing the cover over his tablet, “Ah, sorry, can I help you?” 

“The computers broken, again.” His co-worker sounds the most interesting combination of annoyed and sheepish, “Do we have to call tech support?”

“No, no, let me take a look, it’s alright.” Standing up from the desk, “The one we use for catalogue searching?”

“What else?”

He sighs, muttering curses under his breath, “Thing is about as good as a piece of scrap metal, at this point.” Resigning himself to an afternoon tinkering with the world’s most stubborn library resource computer. “It’s alright, go back to work, I’ll let you know if it decides to behave.”

“Thanks, Nicky, call me if you need help.”

“Yeah, yeah no problem” Facing the not-ancient but absolutely useless desktop, “You going to behave, or do we have to fight?”

Predictably, the computer blinks at him, Nicky sighs again and settles before it.

—

It isn’t that Nicky hates his life. Because he doesn’t, and despite what people might think, he’s fairly content. Working full-time as the head librarian might seem like an outdated job, but Nicky’s only 32, and he likes to argue that libraries are a vital part of society. Upgraded as they are, and some facets available entirely online. Besides, he had a degree in the stuff, and plenty of practice.

Andy might’ve had a series of interesting names for his life. His small apartment, three cats, more books and tech than is strictly necessary for a single man to have, and a car that is really a ridiculous thing, but it runs and he loves it and maybe the radio doesn’t work and it has no AC and the heater is also dying, but it’s a good car and he happens to find it charming.

He’s _fine._

He’s dated, some one night stands, but nothing _sticks._

“Are you reading that book _again?”_ Andy asks, when she catches the soulmates book opened up on his tablet for what is definitely not the 10th, 12th, let’s not talk about it time.

“I think it’s comforting,” Nicky retorts, catching her look of disbelief.

“You know that in most cases, that shit’s a load of crap, yeah? Quynh and I have been married for eight years, no issue. She’s my soulmate, magical eyeballs aside.”

“I know I know..I just think it’s sweet.”

Nicky does not tell her that, for the last six or seven months he’s been glued to the damned thing. Everything feels _antsy._ He’s not an anxious man at all. His life has never felt empty, nor hollow. And yet, a few months back everything started feeling _weird._ Like he just couldn’t settle. Bee’s beneath his skin. Ghosting sensations across his scalp. Tingles.

He’d casually mentioned it during his yearly physical, but the doctor determined nothing out of sorts physically, and Nicky had been delaying calling a psychiatrist.

“Maybe you just need a change of scenery.” Andy suggested, stirring too much sugar into her coffee. ‘Maybe your library is finally getting to you.”

Nicky had declined to respond, but filed it away in the back of his mind regardless.

–

The morning that it happens, Nicky is running late, and doesn’t bother to look in a mirror much beyond ‘brushing teeth and running a comb over hair” before heading into work. 

They’re finally upgrading the useless front computer, and he has to let the techs inside. Meaning he’s supposed to be at work an hour before he’d usually be, fiddling with his keys and muttering apologies as he opens the door fifteen minutes after he was supposed to let them in. Offering to buy them coffee for the troubles.

He’s that sort, after all.

He stands in the early morning crowd rush at the cafe yawning and buzzing, body thrumming with tension he can’t pinpoint, nor understand. It’s ridiculous and by the time he stumbles his way through the unfamiliar order, he feels much like he’s about to explode from it all.

The techs are thankful for their coffees, at least, Nicky tries to do some work in his office, and by the time he finally takes a break from his unsatisfactory work, it’s nearly noon.

There, in the libraries Men’s Room, is when he finally notices it.

His left eye isn’t grey, or green, or blue.

(Or whatever true colour his eyes seem to think they are)

It’s dark brown. So dark Nicky can barely see any other colour to it beyond pupil.

He blinks. Splashes water across his face, scrubs his cheeks.

It’s still there.

He takes a selfie with his camera, and stares.

Still there.

It’s still there after work, and the next day, and the Friday when he meets Andy for their usual after work time at the bar, Andy staring at him.

“So it’s not a contact?”

“No, I don’t wear contacts, or glasses! You know that.”

“You think your flowery soulmate shits legit then?”

“What else _could it possibly be, Andy?”_

Andy studies her beer, for once, she has no answer.

—

It is an extremely boring Wednesday morning when Nicky scrolls through his emails and finds something that bothers him for absolutely no reason at all.

It’s from one of the other departments, and it’s about the national art show being hosted at their oh so esteemed library. Nicky’s library is a popular venue because the building is historic and has a nice receiving room.

That’s not what bothers Nicky. He looks forward to this show. And it’s the first time he’d be in charge of much of it since becoming head librarian some eight months back, but no, it’s the shows headline artist that is _prickling_ at him for yet again, reasons he can’t discern.

Nicky scrolls past the necessary details, but keeps going back to the beginning.

**Headline Artist: Mixed Mediums. Classics with a Twist. _Yusuf al-Kaysani_**

Nicky saves the email.

Again, no reason at all.

–

“Do you think it means anything?” He asks Andy and Quynh while four beers in and sitting on their couch.

“Some artist’s name you’ve never even met or heard of?” Quynh snorts, ‘Yep, definitely cracked some universal secret code there Nicky.”

He sighs, “Hand me another..”

Maybe they’re right.

Maybe he’s being ridiculous.

–

“Sorry, are you uh,,Nicky..Genova?”

Yes, okay, that does sound odd. But to his credit! He _was_ named Nicolò thank you very much. His mother had made some comment about classics, traditions, blah blah.

“Yeah! Sorry just let me-”

He’s at the top of a ladder, fiddling with a birds nest, of all things. The outside of the library (again historic building) attracted plenty of them.

“Take your time, I don’t usually yell at people on ladders, on principle and all.”

The voice is nice.

It’s the dumbest thought Nicky has had in his head in months.

“Good practice, that.” Finally gasping the nest, starting to climb down the ladder, “Okay!” When he’s returned to solid ground.

“So, what can I do for-”

Nicky, quite elegantly, forgets how to think. Or breathe. Or do anything appropriately life sustaining like that.

The man before him, nice voice man, his brain helpfully supplies. is..gorgeous. And see, Nicky has SEEN gorgeous men and is nicely partial to them. But this man is gorgeous, attractive and, most distractingly, has one blue-grey-green who actually knows eye, and one dark brown one.

And! Nicky notices, has completely lost his _own_ ability to speak. The two of them seem to amend this moments later by pointing at each other’s face mostly rudely, stunned and confused.

Nicky seems to find intelligent language first, but only manages to say, “..Are you Yusuf al-Kaysani?”

The equally stunned gorgeous man confirms this, and Nicky is quite sure he either faints, or dies.

(He does neither of these things, thank you very much)

“..It’s nice to meet you, Nicky.” Yusuf says, finding actual intelligence far before Nicky does. Nicky just swallows.

–

Their eyes never reverse to their birth states.

Not at the first date.

Not at the proposal.

Nor the engagement party.

Or the wedding.

–

10 years later, Andy remarks that ‘the most romantic bastard she knows’ would indeed, find an even MORE romantic sap, and that they’d have the perfect book romance.

–

Joe’s cleaning out the closet one evening when he finds a well-worn paper back version of the novel that Nicky had read endlessly on his tablet all those years ago.

“Hey babe, you never told me you had a paper copy of this.”

“Hmm?” Nicky pokes his head out of the bathroom, “I do? Oh, yeah, it’s a bit worn out.”

Joe flips open the cover of it, peering down into the slightly musty paper, reading aloud and finding his way to join Nicky at the vanity.

~~

_**“Before reading this book, we must advise and remind that soulmates in this manner are rare, and that there is little scientific study to show a truth. Please do not fret if you never fall into this concept.”** _

Nicky hums, accepting the arm to his waist, the familiar kiss to his cheek, ghosting along the side of his lips.

“Go on,” Nicky says, casually.

“You know this story, my heart.” Joe chuckles, but continues.

_**“This rare phenomenon has been observed throughout history..”** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fill. Originally posted 5th September, 2020


	25. Cold Skin, Warm Hands (Andy/Quynh)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kisses Prompts
> 
> Original Prompt:
> 
> "Tucking their hands beneath the other person's shirt, just to watch them break the kiss and gasp in surprise at the sensation of cold/warm hands on their skin."

Quynh’s been cold for centuries.

It had stopped, periodically. The water almost felt warm, sometimes. Or she’d gone so mentally numb to it all. Her rapidly-healing skin never acclimatizing the way that it should have.

Of course, if things had gone as they _should._ Then she’d not be here now.

Here is much better. So much better. 

She’s almost content.

When they’d started kissing again, it had felt almost dream like. Andromache-Andy, no, Andy. Andromache forever to she, had been shy and reserved, treating her like some piece of glass cradled in the palm. Gentle, careful. 

It had taken.. _time_ to get back to that state. 

But time was precious to them, and time had given them this and more and Quynh didn’t take to dwelling when everything felt so _right._

This moment. So long **denied** is **hers** and she’s going to take every **inch** of it.

Suffice to say, her own yelp startles her. 

Andy had been keeping their touches careful, almost platonic even in kissing, and her hands are shocking against the bare skin of Quynh’s stomach.

Andromache immediately freezes, but when she goes to move her hand, Quynh stops her, grasping her wrist.

“ **No** , don’t move. I was merely not able to anticipate warmth.” The intense ferocity of Quynh’s own voice stops Andy’s aborted attempt at movement, Quynh backing up until she’s able to hit the wall.

“Keep going.”

It’s warmth, it’s _fire._ Her flesh tingles, surges, _burns._ Andy’s never been one to not be bold, splaying her fingers now, trailing, caressing. Exploring.

Her fingers dance and slide, across Quynh’s stomach, up her ribs, back down, careful, near her hip, around her back, her tailbone.

Warmth. Such warmth. Quynh’s eyes flutter, arching almost unconsciously into it, lips dragging a lazy slide across Andy’s own.

Higher, firmer, Andy stops at the slightly softer flesh above, Quynh’s breathing quickening, steadying. She’s free, beneath the shirt, Andy’s hand so warm against her, fingers pushing in just so, pulsing with the steady thudding of Quynh’s heart.

‘Andromache.”

“You live.” Andy says, voice deepening, “I can feel it, you live.” Even as they share breath.

“I clawed my way back to you.” Quynh says, “Going to take something much stronger to take it away now.”

‘I hope nothing ever tries again.” Andy bites, fingers flexing spasmodically in time with her words.

Quynh sighs, own fingers finding Andromache’s neck.

“Nothing will.” She assures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 6th October, 2020


	26. Argument Resolution (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kiss Prompt
> 
> Original Prompt:
> 
> "An accidental brush of lips, followed by a pause and going back for another, more passionate kiss."

Shockingly, they’re arguing.

Over what, Yusuf forgot sometime around Nicolò’s last cursed out epithet about what, fish? Meat? A tear in his tunic? Yusuf honestly does not know and, truthfully, doesn’t care.

They’re both irritable, confused and tired. They hadn’t been able to hunt, the current heatwave was oppressive and keeping good game minimal, any animal with a brain having retreated to what shade exists. They’re both sticky, hungry and a little bit sick of each other’s constant company.

“Why am I stuck with you, again?” Yusuf mutters, carefully using the language he knows Nicolò doesn’t have as good of a grasp on. Not that it stops him from the series of curses that follow.

Yusuf can’t deal with this, the small hut is too dense, crowded, and Nicolò apparently seems to think yelling at clumps of dried meat is apparently going to solve all his problems, or whatever. Yusuf does not care anymore.

“I’m going out.” He finally says, in their shared tongue, approaching the door. “When you decide to be _sensible-_ I know, very difficult for you, we’ll try again.”

He patiently ignores the noise he gets for it, happy to leave Nicolò to stew and fret about whatever was bothering him so much in their hut. Hot as it is, civilization still exists, and Yusuf walks into town. 

Everyone else is just as sweat covered, he won’t stand out at all.

Never mind that well, walking into town is..quite a trip.

Enough so that it’s early evening when Yusuf finally returns. He’s surprised to smell food cooking, and a general sense of peace and quiet in the small space.

“Nicolò?” Stepping through the entrance way, “What..”

There’s two bowls on their tiny table-the only other furniture beyond their sleeping corner, two cups and a sheepish Nicolò hovering in the opposite corner, holding out another plate.

“Uh..I made dinner.”

Yusuf, intelligently, blinks.

“I..see. Thank you.” Moving to cross the small space, it only takes one and a half strides, stretching out his arms to take the plate. Nicolò keeps his head slightly ducked, most of his face obscured by the long brown hair. “May I?”

“Yes, yeah, it should go on the table.” He mutters. Yusuf takes the plate at the same moment that Nicolò lurches forward, as if to help him, and only succeeds in crashing them together, the plate jostles warningly, and Yusuf stumbles, noses bumping as he catches himself, righting his footing.

Nicolò, however, only keeps leaning inward, grazing his mouth across the corner of his own. Yusuf freezes, and realizes that he didn’t mean to do that when Nicolò pulls back immediately. Sputtering barely coherent apologies from haste.

“Sorry. Sorry I should, no I mean I should not it is not-”

Yusuf puts the plate to the table to prevent the loss of food, fisting Nicolò ‘s tunic in both hands and dragging him back into himself, mentally counting it a personal victory when the most intelligible noise he gets in return is a small, _adorable_ little mewl.

Earlier, when they cared a whole lot less, it was easier to take out their anger, aggression and confusion with/on each other. It had lead to some.. _intense_ encounters. Not all of them entirely pleasant.

But not all of them _unpleasant_ either.

Of course, they’d realized later that once you mingled actual feeling with that, things became a whole lot messier. And a lot harder to walk away from. Especially when you didn’t want to.

Nicolò is wonderfully responsive, all heat and wetness, spite and desire, pushing against Yusuf as though he means to climb him. Accepting it when Yusuf shoves him backwards against the small wall, dragging out the surprised huff that barely has the chance to leave his throat before Yusuf’s mouth is back on his, tongue seeking his own out, tangling, twisting, tasting and licking. Yusuf holding them both up, guided by Nicolò taking some of the weight for himself, hands finding purchase in his hair, his tunic, whatever he can actually grasp.

Things slow, the need to breath overcoming whatever shrieking exists in their heads, Yusuf panting in jagged breaths, Nicolò shuddering, attempting to talk, and giving up when Yusuf shushes him through trailing kisses on his neck, his cheeks, across his nose. Nicolò returning the favour with small peppered kisses across his own ears, down his cheek, his neck. All the movement messy, both turns lazy and heated.

Dinner goes cold, and it’s the only thing that does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 6th October, 2020


	27. Unexpected (Andy/Quynh)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kisses Prompt
> 
> Original Prompt:
> 
> "An unexpected kiss that shocks the one receiving it."

It’s a trick as old as time, but fortunately for Andromache, time is almost as old as she is.

And besides, it’s only really a trick when it’s sole purpose is avoidance.

They’re walking, Quynh and she, its mid-evening. Twilight, the sky more light purple than full black, and Andromache is feeling _playful._

She’s always got a little bit of a devious streak, but there is something to be said for the rush of excitement that floods her from hair root to footprint, edging herself a little closer into Quynh’s space.

There’s an alley coming up, something secluded and quiet. It will be far more occupied come nighttime, but for now, Andromache has a perfect excuse.

“Quick!” She says, guiding Quynh-who’s almost immediately on alert and ready to draw her knife, around the corner with an arm to her waist, a tug to her wrist, pulling her in and in until Andromache can steal her mouth. Quynh’s hand dropping from her waistband where she’d gone for her knife, squirming and starting.

Her attempted call out of ‘Andromache!’ is silenced before it can utter, Quynh’s eyes darting only enough to determine that no, they are _not_ in danger. Andromache is just in one of _those_ moods.

Well, luck for _her,_ two can play this game.

Quynh is all biting and tongue, pushing against and into Andromache, until she’s able to squirm enough to get her knife out, Andromache shuddering when the tip pokes her stomach.

“You should know better than to sneak up on me” Quynh says, her voice low, honey thick.

“My love.” Andromache purrs, “It is precisely why I do.”

Quynh smirks, and brings their kiss back to it’s full fruition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 6th October, 2020


	28. Destruction Room (Andy/Quynh)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General Prompt, "Kisses exchanged as they move around. Hitting the edges of tables or nearly tripping over things on the floor before making it to the sofa or bed."
> 
> Also the first fic in this alt timeline I'm working with where Quynh was never put in the iron coffin and everyone's happy.

The apartment is filled with the sounds of rapid breathing, playful laughter, and furniture crashing for having the gall to exist when they had more _important_ things in mind.

“Androm-you’re going to, ah, you’re going to hurt yourself.” Quynh’s barely able to get the words out, voice half-swallowed by Andy’s biting kisses and humoured huffs.

“You’ll heal.” She retorts, fiddling with the edges of her vest, where it sits at the waist, Quynh shoving her backwards into the couch.

Andy goes, but makes Quynh come right down with her, crashing atop her chest, over her legs. Entirely graceless and utterly unable to care about that, finding Andy’s biting, eager mouth once more. Their legs kick out into the coffee table, send a vase with long-dead flowers (they were busy) askew and one or two books in their haste.

“I, mhm I will, yes, but surely-”

“Surely nothing surely that, stop talking, Quynh.” Andy’s voice heat-free and laughing, amused more than anything.  
  
“You like it when I talk, don’t you fool yourself.” Quynh smirks, sitting herself up, stopping Andromache’s chasing kisses with fingers to her lips. “Still.”

She stills, Quynh can feel her vibrating beneath her hold, tense and excited. Hands taking to roaming, up the planes of Quynh’s hips, stroking along the edges of the silky, embroidered vest, along the traces of flowy cotton, up her arms, stopping to grip her elbow, staring up and up. 

Quynh’s a sun and Andromache’s blinded. 

A delicious, tantalizing burn.

A slow roll to keep her present draws a groan from Andromache, Quynh smiles, devious and perfect, bringing a hand to the binding cord that keeps her long hair in place, dragging it over her shoulder and working the ties expertly with two fingers, devouring every harsher breath that comes from Andromache.

Slowly, the cord unwinds, drawing each strand of dark hair free from it’s captive state, taking a mesmerizing glide down Quynh’s shoulder, _free, free._

“Get down here.”

Andromache surges herself back up, but Quynh allows it, hands finding the freed strands, humming into the new kiss, slick, intense, her own finding stronger purchase in the shorter hair Andromache keeps, encouraging her lips to find her cheek, her neck, where the silky yellow cravat sits waiting to join the freedom the hair had been granted.

When Quynh arches back up, a picture on the wall is the last causality.

It was hideous anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally Posted 7th October, 2020


	29. Mixers (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kisses Prompt
> 
> Original Prompt:
> 
> "One person pouting, only to have it removed by a kiss from the other person."

There are things in life Nicolò prides himself on. 

The ability to keep a completely straight face is one of them.

The 20th century innovated and upgraded much faster than any of them could possibly keep up to, but they’d both been taken by the new concept of an ‘electric mixer’.

And since they usually did have more cash flow than they knew what to do with..hey, the splurge seemed acceptable enough.

However, the speed of such a thing was something they did not anticipate, or the aggression. And thus, they were both completely covered in flour, though Yusuf had taken the brunt of it. There was flour clinging desperately to his curls, matted into his beard, across his nose, down his neck. Flour on his arms where his shirt sleeves were rolled up.

Nicolò had taken some hits of flour to his cheeks, but was otherwise unscathed save for some clumps in his eyebrow. 

“Well.” He swallowed the giggling laughter, “I suppose we’ll have to turn it down.”

Yusuf _harumphed_ at him, but there was a humour to it. An utterly adroable, and bewildered pout peeking through the be-floured beard. 

“Oh, darling. Your..” Nicolò is not laughing, he is _not_ laughing.

He is laughing, and the pout increases in intensity, Nicolò taking up his wrist, pulling him into a chaste kiss that slowly deepens as Yusuf mumbles nonsense against him, Nicolò licking flour from the corner of his mouth.

“I’m what?” Yusuf asked, spirits lifting considerably. (Not that he’d been truly upset to begin with)

“Adorable.” Nicolò breathes, unable to help pecking his lips, fiddling with his curls, making them both cough through a newly produced flour cloud.

“Correction, _very_ adorable.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 7th October, 2020
> 
> Some nerd notes:
> 
> Mixers have been around by patent since the mid 19th century (1880′sish), and electric mixers started cropping up in the 1908-1920′s. But they didn’t really gain commercial traction until after the 1920′s. ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixer_\(appliance\)/))
> 
> I found this image of a [1930's Mixer](https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-1930s-universal-electric-1882371427/), which does indeed, appear a bit of a beast. I tried to google for more, but this is one of the best early versions I could find. KitchenAide, it turns out, has been around and making mixers since this period.


	30. Moonlight (Andy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic. 
> 
> Prompt, "Moonlight".

Andromache has seen more centuries, more moons, more moonlight, than she knows what to do with sometimes. And there had always been some sort of pleasure in seeing how her family reacted to the moonlight themselves once their immortality had taken.

Quynh had always loved it. It’s mystery, it’s radiance. Once, she’d told Andromache that moonlight was exciting in a way that the day could never be. That in the dark, mysteries were less mysterious, but all the more eerie. That people could be observed, and considered. Adventures to be had. Moments to be shared. 

“There’s an intimacy of the moonlight, Andromache.” She’d said, one night, at the highest, most ink-drenched hours. “An intimacy like no other.”

Andy missed her smile, her eyes, how she shone beneath the rays of the moon, arms spread, ready to take it on and find something new to evolve with.

Lykon had enjoyed it too. To him, stars were fascinating. “I never tire of stars,” He’d tell Quynh and herself, “They’re vastness can hardly be imagined to us, as we see them so few.”

She missed him too, how he would curl beneath the stars, head tilted up, blanketed by them.

Joe _loved_ the moon. She heard more metaphors of the moon (shockingly, not all of them with Nicky attached, though that was rare), from him than she sometimes knew what to do with. Joe had a unique, incredible way of viewing the moon. With guidance. With love.

“Cherish the moon.” He told her once, “The moon loves, the moon creates, the moon gives our breaths, holds our fates. With the moon, you are never alone, never lost.”

A little too flowery for her, but Joe always made it sound attractive, and sweet. 

Nicky liked the moon as much, though he also had a fondness for the sun that she didn’t always share in. (He was the early bird of them, even Joe wasn’t as fussed). But he could appreciate the moon. He loved how Joe saw the moon, and he had some ideas about it too.

“The moon is not judgmental, but I feel it’s judgement regardless.”

Andromache still was not entirely sure what that meant, or if it was a good or a bad thing.

Booker did not much care for the night. 

“There’s too many secrets.” He told them, once, twice. “Too much is unknown in the dark, too much time spent thinking.”

He never really expanded upon that, nor did he seem to be one for star-gazing.

“And you, Nile?” Andy asks now, since she’d not yet heard her take.

“I like the moon.” Nile said, legs bent, curled into her chest, “Thinking about it now, how we’ve been there, we’ve seen it up close. Something that has been with from the start, and we’re only just learning her secrets.”

Nile would sit with them, outside, drinking, chatting. Illuminated by fire, or otherwise.

But for Andy herself?

She liked the moon.

Even though she missed her lunar companion terribly.

“One day, love.” She’s careful not to utter where she can be heard. 

When Joe’s arm takes her shoulder, and Nicky’s her waist, she realizes she’s spoken aloud.

She lets it be okay, sighing, leaning.

The moon shines above, bright, fierce, and promising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 8th October, 2020


	31. Forest (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic.
> 
> Original prompt, "forest".

The village was barely big enough to be called such. More of a secluded, clustered area that was off to the side of the main town, bracketed by a small stream, a bridge, and some rough uneven ground. It was created as more or less town overflow, and was only around three blocks of houses on the same road.

Clustered, and nothing like a shop or a church-that was in the main town.

They’ve been in this town about a week, trying to help with the tail end of a rough winter. Delivering food and firewood, simple things like that.

Nobody was entirely sure if it was a knocked candle or a bad stoked flame, but the fire had started fast in the home at the end of the road, only occupied by a man of advanced age who had managed to yell loud enough to alert his neighbour.

Nicolò had woken first, and gotten the others up, They had been spending their evenings held up in a tavern in the main town, but it had taken little time to get back into the smaller not-village.

That had been some hours back, and while many of the houses had been wrecked, nobody died. Which is something they all considered a win.

Of course, now the issue was getting everyone and sorted. Of the five houses that had suffered the worst of the damage, there were three elderly people and eight children 0-12 between them. The rest being teenagers and adults.

Andy and Quynh were sorting out the adults, the teenagers and the elderly, and Yusuf and Nicolò had ended up on entertainment and child comforting duties. They had everyone sequestered up in the back-wooded forest that served as the backdrop to the two villages, and things were settling down as the morning started out.

Two of the families had gone into town to get some lodgings worked out, and left the children with Yusuf and Nicolò at their instances.

Yusuf had a swaddled infant Nicolò couldn’t recall the name of on one hip, and that infants toddler sister, (who Nicolò was fairly sure was called Meredith) doing her best to climb his trousers. Mostly entertaining herself with the pack he had strapped to his belt, batting it back and forth with her hand. 

Nicolò, on the other hand, was trying to keep a five year old girl with long brown-blonde hair from climbing the big tree facing them. The thing was, there was no harm in climbing, not in his mind, but the girls nightgown and soft boots would hardly make for it.

“Lucy.” He tutted, again, gently encouraging her back, “Come on, what will your mother say if you’re stuck in a tree when she comes back into town?”

“Climb!” 

Ah yes, so good for his words to take heed, Lucy scrabbling to grip the bark again, attempting to _slide_ herself up the thing.

“Okay okay tell you what.” Nicolò suggested, gently grasping her hand, “You want to be high up, yes?”

“Climb up high, climb all the way to there!” She emphasized this by pointing up at the tree’s branches, the thinner ones. Which blew slightly in the wind.

Nicolò gently picked her up, chuckling at the little shriek, holding her up until she could sit on his shoulders, “Okay, try now.” He suggested, “Can you reach the branch now?”

“Swing on branch, swing!”

Mercy be.

“Grab at it, can you now?”

She reached way up, and snagged it, Nicolò could feel Yusuf’s eyes on them, feel the warmth and amusement on his back. “Got it?”

“I got it Nicno, I got it!”

He had no idea when he’d become Nicno, but sure, it worked.

“Good job! See? You’re high up now.” He moved himself back just so, letting her have the sensation of movement, the tiny, delighted shriek going straight through the forest.

Meredith. who Yusuf was still trying to occupy had taken notice, and she started yanking harder on his trouser leg, pointing. “Me too! Me too me too!”

“Now look what you’ve done, _Nicno_ ,” Yusuf teased, “Such a bad influence.” Scooping her up in the opposite arm, the infant boy apparently asleep, half of his swaddle blanket covering his cheek. Dead to the world.

“Okay, I can’t get you up as high with your brother in tow, but here.” He lifted her slightly, letting her grasp the lowest hanging branch. Lucy, having apparently gotten cleverer, started to shake her branch. Since it was winter, there were no leaves, but it was apparently very amusing to see it wobble. Yusuf and Nicolò exchanging small, fond glances as the two girls amused themselves.

By the time they got them both on their feet, Lucy had become occupied with the ground below her feet, stamping tiny boot prints into the muddy ground.

“Very impressive, want to see mine?” Nicolò said, making an imprint with his own boot next to hers. “See?”

“Large, like a bear!”

Yusuf snorted into his sleeve. Or tried to, he was trying to fight the infant for it, as the baby seemed very content with the concept of chewing on Yusuf’s cuff.

The children’s parents returned around that point, Lucy running high speed into her mother, Yusuf passing the other two children back, the parents thanking them.

“We’ll be able to lodge in the main town. Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Lucy’s mother asked, “Reginald says he’s sure he saw one of you get burnt?”

“Nothing of it.” Yusuf assured her, covering quickly. “It can be so hard to see in those chaotic moments, we are perfectly fine, as you can see. Everyone is safe-that is the most important thing.”

She seemed convinced, thankfully. 

“Things will be cramped.” She apologized, “But we can make some more room in the church perhaps.”

“That will not be necessary, it was nearing our time to continue on.” Nicolò assured her, “But thank you.”

There’s too much happening by then for her to question them more, and by the time they step back into the forest, Andromache and Quynh are waiting with their small amount of equipment.

Nicolò waits until they’ve got most of the village behind them, before slipping his hand into Yusuf’s, leaning into him slightly.

Yusuf squeezes, Nicolò feeling warm and fond. “You did get burnt.” He says, “Your wrist was on fire.” Sliding his fingers along that very wrist now, feeling only smooth skin. “Are you alright?”

Yusuf rolled his wrist in Nicolò’s grasp. “Not a mark to it, hurt though.”

Nicolò hums, bringing it up and into a kiss. “Anymore?”

“Not anymore.”

In the village for months, years, and decades to come, the fatality-free fire is talked of constantly.

Some call it a miracle.

Some call it circumstance.

Others say maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.

Of course, the only four who know better had to leave the same day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 10th October, 2020


	32. Stubborn (Andy/Quynh)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic.
> 
> Original Prompt
> 
> "One person pouting, only to have it removed by a kiss from the other person."

“Andy.”

Silence.

“Andromache.”

More silence.

“Andromache the Scythian.”

Continued silence.

_Sigh._

“Andromache, love of my life, who I am considering _slowly_ and _carefully_ lovingly stabbing with the finest of my knives. The woman who lights up my earth, the fire in my blood and the radiance in my bones-”

“Bone’s don’t glow, Quynh.” Though she continues her pouting.

“Oh? Then tell that to those X-Ray machines they use now.”

“That’s radiation, dearest.”

“Radiation for radiant bones!” Quynh’s crawled into her lap now, Andy forcing back the giggles that want to spill in favour of her valiant effort to keep pouting.

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Does it not?” Quynh protests, slightly curious. “Neither of us are that scientific.”

Andy’s still pouting, but it’s slowly twisting to more of a smile, which Quynh steals right from her lips with her own. There’s an admirable grunt in protest before Andy relaxes into their ancient dance, only this time her pout is for when Quynh pulls away to breathe, keeping their distance minimal.

“No, bones still don’t glow.”

“Perhaps not,’ Quynh admits, willing to accept her defeat with the goal achieved, returning to their kisses.

“But you do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 12th October, 2020


	33. (Not) A High School AU (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic.
> 
> Original Prompt:
> 
> "High School AU." 
> 
> (But with a twist)

Obviously, Nicky and Joe never went to High School.

Hearing Nile describe it is..surreal. She being the only person who’d attended High School they spent any regular time with.

“What do you think it would have been like?” Nicky asks at random in bed one night, a little bored and not ready to sleep. Joe turning his head, “What what would’ve been like?”  
  
“If we attended ‘High School’.”

“Oh.” Joe rolls over, resting his head into Nicky’s shoulder, “I’m not sure honestly. Way she describes it is very bizarre. It’s own little social pocket.”

“She’s shown us the pictures.” Nicky muses, “But to hear it described is hard to relate to on a level we’re familiar with. All these different facets. It’s not just a learning institute? There are clubs and activities and teams and field trips?”

“Right, and she said how some wear uniforms, but that others do not.” Joe adds, rubbing circles into Nicky’s chest. The cotton t-shirt is worn and thin, and it drags heat into Nicky’s stomach from the pads of Joe’s fingers. “Which seems all so complicated for a place designed to give one an education.”

“It does, but I suppose there’s more too it than education these days. We learned of that through the last centuries and seeing different educational institutions as they change and adapt over the years.”

“Sports” Joe adds, “Sports can be important.”

“Cheerleading too!” Nicky grins, shaking his head into the pillow. Even in the low lamplight, the expression is glowing, making Joe giddy to feel the rumble in his chest. “You could be a cheerleader,’ He muses, ‘Your legs are strong enough.”

“Oh really?” Nicky’s chuckling now, voice trailing the edges of devious. “With little pompoms and glitter in my hair?”

“Why not? The hairstyles you used to keep were long enough.”

“Hmm, they were-but what of you? Would that make you a jock? All covered in logos and bright colours, screaming at a football?”

Joe makes a face, Nicky kisses it off, bending his head to meet him. “Please love, _clearly_ I’d be finding a much more dignified sport.”

“Oh yes yes, clearly. How very..what was the word Nile used for those things? _Prep”_

“Sure, polo, fencing!”

“I do not think the average American High School offers _polo_ , Yusuf.” Nicky struggling to keep the giggles at bay, only restraining them so Nile doesn’t question why he’s cackling at almost two am.

“Perhaps not.” He muses in agreement. “We’d be excellent at history class, of course. I’d have too many art projects on the go.”

“..Did you just say _‘ace history class’_? The air quotes heavily implied in Nicky’s incredulous tone.

“Nile’s dialogue is inspiring, and you’re interrupting the fantasy here.”

“Terribly sorry.” Nicky kisses Joe’s head, mostly to give his mouth and laughter something else to do. “Go on then.”

“As I was saying, I’d have too many art projects on the go. You’d be heavily into active things, swimming perhaps?”

“That sounds like an excuse to imagine me in a speedo, dear.”

“As if I have to imagine.” Trailing his fingers in a soft pathway down Nicky’s muscular thigh for the necessary emphasis. “But you would be terrible at..”

Nicky snickers, leaning more into Joe’s touch, “Are you having trouble deciding what I’d be bad at?”

“Not at all,” Joe says, “I was going to say math, but probably science. You get impatient.”

“Science is not that different from cooking.’ Nicky points out. “You’d be terrible at science, or not terrible but it’d be a subject you weren’t quite as invested in.”

Joe’s hand is still trailing, drawing patterns into Nicky’s thigh just under the line of his boxers, though Nicky’s pretty sure he’s actually snuck his fingers up the hem anyway. “What other subjects do they offer anyway?”

“Uhm.” Nicky’s attempting to not get distracted. “Music? French? Spanish? Apparently there’s something called English class..where they teach literature and the like, Shakespeare’s _still_ popular.”

“He would be.” Joe huffs, having molded himself more to Nicky’s chest, “Hardly know why, sure, it’s good writing, _at times,_ but life changing?”

He sounds so affronted, Nicky muffles his amusement into his curls.

“Would we know each other? You think, or like one another?”

It’s a question that holds deeper meaning, at times. Both of them pausing the odd little fantasy to think on it. 

They’ve asked such things before, at different times. Sometimes the answer is different, but neither of them likes entertaining the idea of not having been together for too long.

“Maybe not at first” Joe says, finally. “But much like a magnet, we’d come together eventually.”

Nicky hums, contented. “I bet you’d win a poetry contest.”

“Why thank you.” Joe grins, the moment breaking slightly, “You’d get detention for getting too aggressive in the debate teams.”

‘But I’d win.’ Nicky argues, not even questioning that.

“Sure, but at what cost?”

“Does it matter?”

Joe lifts his head, “Would you accept my invitation to prom?”

“Depends, are you standing on my lawn with a sign, or screaming it in the cafeteria?”

“Love notes in the locker, on pastel sticky notes.” 

There’s a heartbeat of silence, until Joe lifts his head, staring Nicky dead on, hand still clutching his thigh as the moment breaks and they let the laughter that’s been simmering just below the surface burst; both cracking, laughing openly and louder than they should be.

Nicky’s chest shakes, Joe’s fingers grasp, the peals slowing into lazy kisses and breathless chuckles. As they settle, Nicky shifts their positions, until he’s able to lay side-by-side with Joe, fingers tracking the curls of his beard. Threading gently through them, Joe’s hand drawing tiny patterns on his thigh, rings warm against the flesh he slightly bears.

“I love you, dork.” Nicky chuckles, low-voiced and endlessly fond.

Joe’s gaze softens, glittery and dark, “Takes one to know one, my love.”

“Oh shush.” Nicky giggles, drawing him into another kiss. The modern slang never failing to amuse him coming from Joe’s ancient lips, world adapted vernacular. “..Dork.”

He gets tickled in the ribs for his troubles.

–

The next morning, Joe is making coffee at the counter with a French press, Nicky thumbing through eggs to make their breakfast, when he turns to ask.

“Hey, Nile?”

She glances up from the fridge, trying to find the orange juice Andy probably finished and forgot to replace, “Yeah?”

“Would Nicky make a good cheerleader?”

Nile slams the fridge with her head, sputtering, Nicky nearly cracking the egg accidentally in the carton from laughing.

From the stairwell, they all hear Andy yelling, “Obviously, but don’t subject _anyone else to it!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted 12th October, 2020


	34. Breath (Joe/Nicky)

_For each breath is something new._

_For each breath,_

_The death,_

_The life._

_Knowledge._

_Stilted._

_Taken._

_Waiting._

_Hitching, rising. Panting. Gasping._

_Shock. Surprise._

_Panic and Calm._

_Each time, he waits._

_Holding his own._

Nicky knows the exact cadence of Joe’s breathing.

When he sleeps, when he wakes. When there’s a nightmare. The tantalizing touch of arousal, the bated waiting of renewal.

The moments with none are a gut punch. Steady, disturbed. The air around him too slow. To still. To frighteningly silent. Each second, each minute ticks by in a terrible loom. His own heartbeat so loud, so threatening in his own ears, he waits. Impatient every time.

It’s a thread, hovering in the balance until Joe comes back to him. The pupils before the breath, contracting with the light, seeing the world again. 

One might think it is simply rising from sleep, until that shuddering, violent gasp.

When its Nicky, silent and cold, Joe counts his own.

He sometimes thinks if he does, he can breathe his own life back into his love, knowing that there’s an impossibility to it all, and desiring it nonetheless.

“Those moments are always so long.” Nicky says, somewhere in the dark. It’s late, they’re laying on the floor, covered in blood and dirt. They have no signal to know if they can move safely yet, and wait, focused only on each other’s eyes. Nicky’s shiny, reflecting the light, Joe’s absorbing it.

“Agonizing” Joe whispers, wishing Andy would give them some kind of all-clear. Though Nicky hears him perfectly. “Moments where you do not breathe, moments where the silence drowns me. My heartache surmounting-”

“Is this it?’ Nicky finishes, “We never.”

“Not this time” Joe’s hand is a steady clutch in his own. “Not this time, my heart.”

“No.” A release of oxygen to his side. as if Nicky’s letting his own bated breath go, “Not this time.”

~~  
Joe’s breath is soft, serene, steady. It brings forth poetry, declaration. Each story sounds all the sweeter with Joe’s breathing behind it. How he goes so steady when he’s overly emotional. How he can make himself so known with every gasp, every swallow. The hitching in his tone.

“You feel things to the core of your being. Your love would encompass the earth, wrap it in your embrace, and heal all it’s problems if you could make it so.” Nicky whispered. His own tone solid, rough, impassioned. Because he wants Joe to know, to understand. And there’s no amount of metaphor that makes it any less truthful. 

Joe stops, his reading abandoned, the delightful waver to his voice of true affection. “Devastating,” His whisper near-matching Nicky’s, “You are a devastation with your tongue.”

It is only truth, only truth they know.

~~

The only time they like each other breathless is in intimacy. The gasps that come not from pain, but pleasure. The slowing of inhales, jagged and rough, where one’s higher functioning is so reduced. Overwhelmed. Adored.

Words trip, stumble. Tightness in chest, pulling, searing in lungs. 

Only then, is it allowed.

Only then, is true deprivation bearable.

Desired, even.

As it comes back. It thrives. It glows. It shines.

~~

“When I cannot hear you, my world stops. When the silence is so deafening, even for those mere milliseconds, I shatter.” Joe says, curling around Nicky in the yet again too-small bed. 

“And mine.” Nicky agrees. “But I hear you now. I feel you. I feel it. I feel your heart, your strength. Each inhale against my back, your exhale against my neck, that is my comfort.”

~~

They breathe together. In sync, when they can.

Assured. Renewed.

~~

_Breath by breath,_

_Beat by beat._

_You’re here,_

_With me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic. Sentence Meme. Originally Posted 16th October, 2020


	35. Slow to Start, (Andy/Quynh)

It started slow, easy. But Quynh _clearly_ misjudged the mood Andy was in. Because her chaste peck to the corner of Andy’s mouth as she reached for her coat was thrown off kilter by Andy capturing her bottom lip between her teeth, using expert maneuvers to get Quynh against the wall, subjected to the heated, biting kisses that never failed to make Quynh’s entire world go off-axis, fuzzing and fogging her mind before a break for oxygen brings some gentle clarity.

“Andy,” She pants, when she can actually _think, “C_ ome _on,_ we have to-”

“Shh, shh relax, it’s fine, there’s not-”

“You _know_ that’s not true.” Oxygen and desire at war in Quynh’s head. Rational says _behave,_ Andy being Andy and sending lightning through her fingertips, heat coiling in her gut says, _maybe not._ “If we’re-stop distracting me,” Because Andy is trying to bite her again. “If we’re late _again-Andy!”_

“I’m not distracting you.” Andy huffs, though it’s mostly cut off from her mouth being mostly occupied with Quynh’s collarbone, actively fighting the jacket that Quynh is attempting to put on. 

‘Incorrigible.” Quynh mumbles, sliding her own hand down the back of Andy’s neck, elegant fingers tugging at the short strands that sit there. Andy’s stopped wearing hair long enough to grab, but certainly not too short to mess up. “Absolutely positively-”

“Shush.” Andy snickers, no heat to it. Dragging herself further up to find Quynh’s mouth again, deciding she’s missed it in the fifty seconds she’s been absent from it’s taste.

Quynh makes a final, weak and last ditch attempt to discourage her. Because _really,_ they do have somewhere to be. But then Andy does that thing with her tongue and pushes in _just so_ and honestly..

A final glance at the clock, taunting as it is, tells Quynh that maybe it’s a worthy sacrifice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kisses Prompts Fic. Originally posted 19th October, 2020


	36. Fog of Ages (Andy/Quynh)

Andy never took Quynh’s necklace off.

If she was ever to be without that necklace, she’d consider it a personal failure. It was a constant in her world when few things were. With Quynh’s necklace, she could both remember her and remain hopeful. Or, as hopeful as she could be. 

Hope..

Such a strange concept, that.

She’d had it once. Still did, at times. No matter how weary or cynical, hope lingered in the back of her mind.

 _Something_ had to keep her going, after all.

It had been cut off her neck, accidentally, sometime in the sixties.

She had panicked instantly when she’d noticed. While it was out of character for her to do so, the idea of losing the only part of Quynh she had left, unable to trust her memories about it these days-sent her spiralling.

“What is it? What’s going on?” Nicky’d asked, confused by the way she was hyperventilating, cursing, and kicking at the cemented flooring. “Andy?”

“The..the..Quynh.”

Joe was closest to her, at the time, migrating to her side, “Quynh?” His confusion evident, “Andy?” 

“It” Andy grabbed uselessly at her throat, and it led to all three men catching on instantly, Booker falling to his hands and knees to start searching the floor, Joe moving to the exterior of the room while Nicky began turning bodies over to see if any had fallen atop it.

Methodical, quick, dutiful, Andy tried to help, trying to quell the roaring in her ears until Joe shouted, coming back to the room. “It was on the edge of a switchblade” He said, holding it out to her.

Andy clutched it like a lifeline, repairing the cord of it right then and there with some thread and rope.

She wore it that way for a decade, until she was able to replace the cord again. She debated about moving it onto a chain, but considered it more risky that way. Chains broke.

–

Any time Andy was too close to the ocean, she got tense.

They all noticed, and only Booker had questioned it. Once. In the 1820′s. And never again after that.

(Andy sometimes wondered how that conversation had gone, because she’d gone to find a bottle before she heard Nicky yanking Booker into another room)

She couldn’t bear to ask.

Sometimes, lying in the dark, hearing nothing or the odd snore, she’d think.

_Determined movements, cutting through bodies, through air itself. Fluid, graceful, strong. So strong._

_Fabric might get dense, coarse after long wear, but the skin beneath remained eternally soft. Only slightly calloused in the fingers from the life before death. Earth worn footing._

_Night sky hair, so soft and silky beneath Andy’s fingertips._

_And then-_

And then Andy would get frustrated, her memory stubbornly refusing to recall any more. To be able to recognize anything beyond some fragments. It felt like such a _disservice._ All Quynh _was_ was memory, and Andy couldn’t even grant her that much?

Couldn’t even give her the satisfaction of being something more than just a long forgotten fragment in the ocean?

Was she still breathing? Had the endless death finally granted her any mercy?

She yells, she screams, there’s nothing she can _do._

She’d broken her wrists in those chains, when they took her, and still they’d not been loose enough to save her.

_Failure. Failure. Failure._

–

One of them would hold her, when she cried. Not always, Andy didn’t always want it. But sometimes..sometimes she did. Sometimes it was nice, to feel a sudden body about her back, her front, whoever was closest, usually.

Nicky slept the lightest, and tended to be the first to respond. Joe would because Nicky moving woke him up, and if Booker was awake he’d be around first too, but he rarely beat Nicky to wakefulness.

It soothes the hollow ache, the empty pit in her chest.

Temporarily.

–

Go on. Continue. Exist.

Live. Breathe. Die.

Come back.

Do it again.

And again.

Save humanity from itself.

Again, and again, and _again._

Endless battles, endless wars. They never did seem to stop finding creative ways to kill each other. _So.fucking.exhausting._

Andy revives with Quynh’s necklace in her vision, sprawled out beside her, heaped up as she is. She clutches it when she can feel her fingers again.

_Not yet, my love. The universe keeps us apart still._

So old.

_Her laugh is harder to recall._

_Her voice only comes in dreams._

_We were supposed to conquer the world._

_**Together.** _

~~

“Andromache?”

She starts, sitting up faster than her brain is ready for, Quynh sitting in her lap, staring into her face like she’s trying to solve a puzzle.

“Sorry, shit, I was..”

“Sleeping?”

“Lost in thought, I guess. Or sleeping, who knows.” Andy sighs, reaching out, lacing her fingers through Quynh’s. “Last I checked, you were asleep too.”

“Last you checked” Quynh’s smile is _radiant_ in the low light. “Surely, that was some hours back, it’s morning now.”

Indeed, so it is. There’s birds chirping. All bright and optimistic.

“So I was asleep.” Andy huffs, “Too much to drink last night.”

“Why Andromache, too much to drink? I should put that in writing.”

“Hey, mortal now, and all-”

Quynh’s head tilts, just so, “Not now, no. Not since we reunited.”

Oh yes, that was truth, wasn’t it? Something bright and happy blossoms in Andy’s heart, making it swell. Quynh’s still on her lap, and _really_ that won’t do. Andy decides this the second she grips Quynh’s hips, delighting in her outraged shriek as she tackles her down into the bedding. “I forgot, how beautiful mornings could be.” Andy confesses, half-muffled by Quynh’s lips.

“Do you mean the sun, or I?” Quynh teases, nipping at her a little.

Andy sits back up, Quynh’s necklace dangles between their necks, hovering in the air like between them like some poignant metaphor that’s surely obvious but Andy isn’t awake enough to consider.

“You, of course. I have seen a million suns, but they were meaningless without you.”

Maybe she’s not too sleepy for poetry after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic. Originally posted 21st October, 2020
> 
> Went with the [The Fog of Ages](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFogOfAges) concept/trope. 
> 
> For those who can’t check the link, it’s considered a concept within immortality, using the theory that if one lives too long, their memory ‘reaches capacity’ and starts ‘overwriting’ things they once knew like a tape recorder would a cassette. Which is something Andy herself did allude to in-canon. 
> 
> It also has, as you can see, maximum angst potential. But me being me, all angst I write has to have a good outcome ;)


	37. Jacket (Nile)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4 times Nile got someone else's jacket and one time it was her own.

_**5: Joe** _

“You’ll freeze.” He tells her, even though it’s not that cold out, it’s _wet._ Everything is wet and the rain is one of those ‘probably won’t stop for the next thousand years’ types that seems to create a curtain of water before their vision. She tries to protest, even as he’s holding the long black trench-coat style jacket out, “What about you?” Only getting a headshake in return, “Don’t worry about me, I’ve got another one.” She has doubts, but takes it anyway. it’s warmer than she expected, and wraps around her like a blanket, slightly too large. “I bought it a size bigger.” He explains.

(She found out later he did that deliberately, so he and Nicky could share if it was necessary)

_**4: Nicky** _

She woke up suddenly, overly warm and confused, blinking consciousness back when she could see properly in the dark, quelling her breathing and taking note of her surroundings. She hadn’t fallen asleep with a blanket on, but now she’s covered by a heavy parka, something yellow and fleece lined. The mountain region is chilly, and she can see the jacket is overtop of her own sleeping bag and blanket.

“Nile?”

Nicky, of course, a pin dropping four miles away would wake that man on a mission. “Sorry..I didn’t..isn’t this yours?” Indicating the jacket overtop her, “Won’t you be cold too?”

Andy’s nearest Nile, curled up in her own sleeping bag and furs. Nicky only chuckles, ‘You were shivering in your sleep, and besides-” He motions to the arm around him in the dark, something Nile can barely see between darkness and blankets ‘I’ve a space heater”

Well, that much was true.

_**3: Andy** _

“Put it on.”

“It looks ridiculous.”

Andy chucks the thing at her head. It _is_ hideous. Something patched up and half-fur half-polyester. Nile legitimately does not know what it is supposed to be.

‘I..what _is_ it?”

“A jacket.’ Andy says, because sure, she can believe that all she desires, it just looks like a mess of fabric to Nile.

Still, Nile puts the thing on. She has no idea why she’s meant to be wearing this table-cloth monstrosity, but it does _feel_ nice enough, makes the walk a bit more comfortable. Even though it isn’t cold really, and there’s still no reason for Nile to be wearing it.

Later, she’s surprised by Nicky’s expression when she comes to dinner after her watch. “I know, it’s weird looking” She grumbles, sitting. “Don’t know why Andy was so insistent on my having it.”

Nicky just grins, and Nile is further confused, “What?”

“She made that.”

Nile blinks, picking up a plate, brow knitting as she thinks it through. Andy is nowhere in sight now. 

“..Oh.”

The jacket becomes one of Nile’s most precious possessions, after that.

_**2: Mother** _

When Nile was growing up, Chicago’s weather was either ‘fine’ or ‘actually weather is a concept unbeknownst to this area, I’m going to do whatever I please’

Nile got a new coat every year. Something that could suffice in multiple elements, her mother watching fondly as she unpacked the newest version every Christmas morning, and when her brother was born, he was incorporated into this sensible tradition.

She’d had so many over the years. One was pink, one was white, one year she begged for a bright blue one with a celestial print that she was sad to grow out of. One had been long and purple, another was elegant and black.

She missed that, sometimes. Did her brother still get the yearly jacket? Did her mother sometimes browse the malls, the online catalogues and feel that ache in her chest?

Maybe she’d send her mother one. A token. “I’m still here, I just can’t tell you.”

Maybe.

_**1: Nile** _

It was a gorgeous jacket.

She saw it in a store by accident. Bright red, nearly the darkness of blood, sharp and radiant. It had a sharp push down collar and a large belt with a bright gold and black buckle, and stopped just short of the knee. Thick, but not bulky.

It was _terrifyingly_ expensive, but the others talked her into it. She loved how it felt, loved how it hugged and clenched. It also had _pockets._ Not just the outer pockets, but hidden inner pockets.

The weather was turning, the leaves going from soft to crunchy, and standing there, the jacket billows around the sides.

She has no idea how long she stands out there, hands in her pockets, shrouded in her new purchase, when she’s approached.

“I want to send her something. I cannot carry on this way. Times are different. I can make it work.”

Andy makes a noise, one Nile can’t discern, surprised but not startled by the hand on her shoulder.

“Let’s see what we can do, to make that happen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic. Originally posted 22nd October, 2020.


	38. Isn't What I Think It Is (Andy/Quynh and Joe/Nicky and Booker)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On tumblr, I've been writing in an alternate timeline where Quynh never went into the iron coffin. This is in that timeline/verse.

Andromache and Yusuf had spoken in unison, each looking to their respective partners with a look of confused alarm and encroaching dread.

“Depends on what exactly you are using to define ‘that’ as, my love.” Quynh said, speaking first, all bright-eyed and gleaming deviously. A cat with the canary, one could say.

Andromache studied the line of body just behind Quynh, who looked fairly triumphant in her long coat, bow strapped to her back, flint-lock pistol clutched in hand.

“Quynh..” Andromache tried, but all she was able to see was Nicolò shuffling, following Yusuf’s gesturing to place the man-and it was a man, as much as Andromache could tell-down on the spare straw-filled mattress they had set out by the fire for such purpose. The man appeared fairly tall, lanky in the slightly underfed sense and was bloody from head to toe where mud and snow hadn’t ravaged the rest of him.

Gruesome enough, surely.

“His names Sebastien” Quynh said, cheerfully.

“Why is he unconscious?” Yusuf asked, moving to Nicolò’s side, taking his rifled musket from him, gently hanging it over the doorway with the others. “And he looks like you stepped on him, Quynh.”

“I did no such thing.” She retorts, working on getting her outer layers off. “Not my fault he put up such a fuss.” Working a hand through her hair, detangling the cords holding it together. Yusuf doing the same for Nicolò, who was just shaking his head, leaning backwards into Yusuf’s touch. “He was hard to corral.” He admits, “We would still be dealing with him if Quynh had not done so.”

On the mattress, the man is starting to shift, life breathing back into the mangled form, Andromache drawing an arm about Quynh’s waist, the four of them waiting for Sebastien to find some clarity again.

He curses, bit by bit, as he wakes, one eye fixating on them all. When he recognizes Quynh, he recoils further into the mattress, sputtering. 

Andromache spares him, slightly, and gives him a nod. “He lives.” In the language Sebastien should be able to recognize. The man’s straggly blonde hair covering the non-bloodied portion of his face. “We’ll spare you the details, I’m Andromache, this is Quynh, Yusuf and Nicolò.”

“Spare..me the details?” Sebastien asks, “I think..I deserve _some_ details.”

Perhaps he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Prompt. Originally posted 24th October, 2020.


	39. Never Want More (Andy/Quynh and Joe/Nicky)

Neither of them are poets.

Of the four of them, Yusuf was the poet. 

Andromache had tried, once or twice. Emulating some of the lit and cadence, the sweet reverie that Yusuf could emit from his tone, to tell Quynh such things. Her love for Quynh a landscape unable to be entirely canvased. No painting, no sculpture, no storied tale nor fanciful literary piece would ever truly encompass how she felt about Quynh with even the barest level of accuracy.

_How could you tell the world at large,_

_This person extends beyond personhood._

_Their impact, in my world, in my heart, reaches a tidal wave that could never possibly be contained, described, understood._

_How finding her in that desert felt like salvation, like homecoming._

_To be known by someone so intensely, so intimately. So strongly that a single glance betrayed thoughts unheard._

Oh, she tried, and Quynh had done the same. Both stumbling over each other to voice what their heads spoke so readily. No century made such languages easier when the accurate words have no existence. No tongue defines it, no description.

“You think too hard of it.” Nicolò says one evening, near startling Andromache from her seat. He moved so quietly when he wanted to. It is only they who could possibly sneak to her. Since she is unbound with them.

Never a need to fear, not when it is only the four of them.

“Of what?” Andormache pressed, watching him take to the fire. “I had the same struggle, still do. Yusuf makes words sound so beautiful, so intense. He treats language like it was crafted specially for he; bending words to his will and shaping them to his desires. It is madness, his talents. I could never compare.”

“And what to it?” Andromache asks, unguarded in a way she only ever was with these three. 

“I stopped trying to say what I cannot, and speak what I know. It warms him all the same, and he never holds a doubt to how I feel, nor I he. You and Quynh, you have what words fail to describe, if it brings you discontent, simply say so, perhaps.”

“I do.” She claims, watching Quynh crest the over lap of the hill that brackets their camp, carrying the hunts success over her shoulder, conversing quietly with Yusuf. It is amusing, Andromache thinks, how she and Nicolò both light up in unison to see their respective loves, and each other in general. It should be alarming, how content they all are with each other. 

Andromache knows that it can only be so. There is the world at large, and then there is them. A strange quadruple outlier to it all.

As Quynh and Yusuf return to them, Quynh sets their freshly captured and detained rations to the fireside, and laughs openly when Andromache tugs her to the ground, falling to her lap with a smile that makes the firelight that much more radiant, that much more bountiful.

At her side, Yusuf has brought a willing Nicolò to his feet, and Andromache pays little mind to where they choose to vanish to. Focus entirely drawn to Quynh, wishing she could make the words in her chest have a voice.

_You light the sky, you light my heart. You bring my warmth and hold my heart in your hands._

“Hello.” Quynh chuckles, drawing her into a kiss, framing her face with both hands. Slight as they are, they devastate and pleasure with unsurmountable, equalized intensity.

Andromache is obsessed with them, even knowing her touch in her sleep, reacting on a subconscious level, that thrill never fades.

“Hello.” Andromache returns, soft against Quynh’s lips.

“I love you, you know?”

Quynh furrows her brow, tilting Andromache’s head to catch a ray of the firelight, “Of course.”

“Yes..I-” Andromache swallows, hands steady against Quynh’s waist, around her back, “Of course..but I-”

“Andromache,” A kiss to her brow, “Andromache,” A kiss to her cheek, “Andromache.” The other cheek. Holding Andromache’s stilted breath between them,

“Quynh.”

“Andromache.” Another to her lips, a return, a captured embrace,

_Where my words may fail._

_My emotions, my heart, my skill, my loyalty never does._

_My love,_

_My most furious, impassioned, radiating love._

_Hold me._

_Forever._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Prompt. Originally posted 27th October, 2020


	40. Stew of Romance (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feat that ‘Stew of romance’ line Joe has and that Nicky promptly roasts him for in The Old Guard Vol 2: Force Multiplied that I still have to start properly eep.
> 
> Mixing it with the movie verse because..I said so. IDK work with me.

The thing is, for all that Joe was a _masterfully intense_ wordsmith, he had some truly.. _interesting_ turns of phrase that sometimes made Nicky pause, turn and ask if he’d heard him correctly-or stare at him incredulously and wonder what terrible corniness had temporarily possessed his husband’s language-portion of the brain.

That _being said,_ Nicky loves those moments almost as much. Even if the phrase ‘stew of romance’ was one that Nicky teased him about for days. (Because really, “I like a good stew, _Nicolò.” Was the_ **weakest** justification for such a phrase)

(Not that Nicky is immune from receiving as good of a tease himself, usually at the fact that he could sometimes just not help himself in making bets.) 

Joe had also taken to modern slang (any modern slang, it never depended on the time period, he adapted nearly instantly) like a duck to water. Which was how Nicky could hear “Can you hand me the spatula, darling?” the same day he’d hear, “Babe, where’s my pants?” (Though Nicky was glad they’d left the 90′s and he didn’t have to hear Joe call things ‘radical’ anymore, that had gotten..out of hand)

He loves him all the same, of course.

However.

He was _wholly, completely and utterly unprepared_ for what having Nile around would do to Joe’s vocabulary. And if he had thought ‘radical’ had been bad, it was **nothing** to turning around from the coffee pot one early morning only to hear Joe whistling from the doorway and happily proclaim, (with a completely straight face)

“Someone is looking a snack this morning.”

Nicky blinked, slowly at first, then twice rapidly.

“…Pardon?”

Joe, apparently undeterred, crosses the kitchen in three strides, places a shockingly delicate tap to his hip and proclaims, more slowly. “A snack, you, dear.”

“I’m..flattered?” Maybe he was still sleeping. Maybe he was dreaming, or maybe Nile and Andy were around the corner and he was missing some truly intense prank.

“Mmm, you should be.” Joe says, drawing him into a good-morning kiss, feeling Nicky’s confused frown against his mouth, “Delectable, truly, the taste of you. Still all warm from sleep.”

Well, ‘delectable’ would be a more appropriate association with snack, and _oh, for the love of-_

“Nile’s been having fun, I take it?” Nipping teasingly at Joe’s bottom lip, smirking at the slight grunt he gets. “She has such a vast dictionary at her disposal, after all, why not put it to use?” Joe says, crowding Nicky against the counter, sighing when he occupies himself with finding a pathway down Joe’s neck. 

Why not indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentence Prompt Fic. Originally posted 28th October, 2020


	41. Nicky in Red (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Blood, descriptions of blood.

##  **_“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!”_ **

**_-Lady MacBeth, MacBeth, Act 1, Scene V_ **

**_–William Shakespeare_ **

_Some quotes live on in infamy, even if a select few can truly relate._

_Blood is not solely, nor purely ‘red’._

_Sometimes, it’s a darkened crimson, almost more black._

_Shiny, sleek. Cloying, clotting._

The first time Nicolò saw blood touch his sword, he felt dazed. Solitarily focused in a way that kept his mind far, feet rooted.

Nicolò had felt sometimes so wholly separated from his body, yet so frighteningly **present** all the same.

The disconnect between that man, and the one he is now is so astronomical he can sometimes scarcely believe they are both he. Though, he refuses in the same breath to shy away from that.

Blood sticks to his cheeks, his hair. Cleans itself from the skin with a wipe, the hair a greater shower. Sticky residue remains even in the mist. He thinks of that quote, sometimes. (Even if his personal feelings on Shakespeare are sometimes best left out of certain vocabularies).

He cannot deny the lines impact.

Stains that go skin-deep and beyond don’t fade.

He’s _aware_ of this **constantly.** Sometimes deliberately keeps himself so. When old guilts creep up unawares.

No cut of his own lasts, no blow. Blood remains on freshly healed, fully knitted skin like a brand that doesn’t belong alongside it.

Blood’s nearly always described in taste the same way.

_Mercurial._

_Like dry rusted iron._

_Metallic._

Reds a colour they do not wear often.

Bathtubs are rarely designed to accommodate two fully-grown men and in this day and age Nicky considers it a fault that’s he’s fully intended to bring to some well meaning, if misguided crafter.

It’s still on the agenda, it only makes him miss bathhouses all the more.

“You’re far away.” Joe’s voice comes from nowhere, Nicky sitting fairly precariously on the edge of the rooms claw foot tub, one of the only designs that allow him to have his feet in on the opposite end, Joe nestled between his legs, Nicky slowly working a comb and oil through his curls to dislodge seemingly endless clots and flakes of red that nestle as far into Joe’s scalp and coils as they possibly can, determined to _sit there forever._

Those coils have no clue what sort of man they are up against. Nicky hasn’t let a fleck remain in Joe’s hair in over 900 years. Not going to start now.

“Sorry, am I?” Nicky muses, tipping his head back. Nicky’s still covered himself, there’s streaks across his cheeks, flecks embedded at the base of his neck. He wanted to tend to Joe first, preventing settlement.

His perch behind Joe, feels precarious, flanking him with his calves. He’s grateful for his balancing skills.

“A little.” Joe muses, tipping his head back to study his face, eyes so shiny in the low light. Nicky’s sunk into those open depths so many times before, finding home and purchase within that knots his stomach and warms his heart even now.

“I’m..focusing.” He tries, unable to help a stroke of his fingers across Joe’s cheek, glad that he’d freed the blood from the beard already. Leaving only smooth, if wet dark hair in it’s wake. Freeing Joe once more.

“Care to share your focus with me?”

“Always” The response fast, clear, absolutely assured. “Just never really amazes me how much of a mess it makes.”

Its not precisely what he means, vague in a way he never tries to be. But they understand each other perfectly.

Purpose.

Joe hums, soft and assured. Letting Nicky tip him forward again, bringing his comb near the base, massaging Joe’s scalp with every movement until he goes pliant again, utterly awash in Nicky’s devotion and concentration.

When the final piece dislodges itself, sinking to the bottom of the tub, they shift, Joe turning with careful slowness, worrying not for water that spills, accepting Nicky in his arms, stroking at Nicky’s own face with a wet cloth, scrubbing away at the final residue of it.

The flecks, the splatter, the pieces that wash down the drain, free from skin.

Surface freedom.

_We do what we think is right._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fic. Originally posted 31st October, 2020


	42. Missed You So Much (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Earthquake Reference

Nicky can’t breathe. Can’t catch his breath. Can’t find even an iota of oxygen in his system; and he doesn’t care. If he never intakes oxygen again, if it means he’ll forever only know the breath, the very _life essence_ of Yusuf then he’ll take that, take it and take it and take it.

‘Nic-” It’s as breathless as he feels, echoed and gasped into his own mouth, and fades to nothing when Nicky surges forward again, clutching at Yusuf like his own flesh and blood depends on his kisses to find sustenance. Like he requires the touch, the _knowledge_ of safety and security again.

They healed ages ago, even if they’re both dirty and bloodied _._ He can feel holes in Yusuf’s coat, in the shirt beneath, keening despite himself when his fingers find a slash, a tear, clutching at him all the more.

He’s not aware Joe’s speaking, or trying to when he can find the energy the _ability_ to draw his mouth from Nicky’s, fingers rubbing into his cheeks where soot and grime coat them. Covering the skin with raw, grey ash and browning dirt.

“I’m here, hey,” Nicky didn’t think he was crying, but there’s streaks in his cheeks, a burn in his eyes, making them all the more scratchy.

“If the earth has to shake so violently, it can do so without finding it necessary to drag us apart.” Nicky babbles, nonsensically, clawing at Yusuf again like he’s trying to find a path inside him and never let go. It’s so utterly _human._ So base. And maybe some who would know of their undying would consider them to be above such ‘human’ fears; but they all know better.

 _It is not going to be some freak of nature disaster that takes you from me._ Nicky thinks, perhaps a bit ridiculously, perhaps a bit hysterically. There’s the surge of raw, heated despair and anger coiling, soothed by Yusuf’s hands in his hair, drawing him in, and in. He can’t taste dirt anymore, can’t taste water; only the taste known to him for so long he could detail it in his sleep. A taste he’ll take to the grave.

“ Nicolò, Nicolò , I’m here. We’re safe, I’m here.” But Nicky knows he’s saying it for his own sake too. Nicky finding some purchase on his arms, drawing him even closer, because if he keeps touching him, keeps holding him and reorienting him, Yusuf will know it too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kisses Prompt Fic. Originally posted 6th November, 2020


	43. Early Revival (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Injury, Violence

Yusuf woke shouting, pained, and confused.

He was anticipating his head to hit dirt, and finding only calloused, warm hands cradling it instead.

“Easy, Yusuf..” Nicolò, _Nicolò of course._ Strong, steady Nicolò , but was **he** alright?

There’s more pain, creating a ripple in Yusuf’s chest that agonizes, tight, hot and furious, feeling and _hearing_ the sickening squelch, the knit of bone and flesh. Whatever had happened was clearly something he’d not wish a repeat, and the whimper that comes is unbridled and unwanted, almost unaware of Nicolò’s own bloodied fingers stroking his head, his cheeks, down into his beard and across his neck.

“Easy.” He says, again, as if it’s the grounding mantra. “Do not move, I could not..” 

“Nicolò..” Yusuf’s throat feels raw, exposed, as though he’s swallowed the very earth beneath them, a raw grit canvas that slaughters his words. Yusuf wants to see, needs an understanding of what is happening. Something at least upper rib level, possibly higher into his chest, from where he can feel bright, blossoming pain, making him gasp and groan, vision fuzzing, tiny pinprick sparks in the corners.

“Look not.” Nicolò says, blockading all of Yusuf’s vision with himself. Above, he can see where blood has slashed across Nicolò’s pale skin, framing in speckles and splotches. Some of it soaked into his hair, one ear shiny. Yusuf slowly begins to register he’s braced up against Nicolò’s stomach, can feel the flex of muscle from his breathing, the shift in the legs he brackets Yusuf’s upper body with.

_How long had he been holding him? Begging and pleading with God to let him wake..?_

The thought makes Yusuf keen, not from the pain in his chest, but in his heart. Raising his own hand to find that upside down cheek and _grab,_ wanting him to tug down, growling low in frustration when Nicolò only sighs in distress, covering Yusuf’s searching, pleading fingers with his own. “Yusuf.”

“Let me.. Nicolò, let me, I am..I am here. You would not..”

_I will not leave you to this Earth alone._

He can see Nicolò’s understanding of the silent thought in his eyes, in the way he turns his bloodied cheek to Yusuf’s grasping fingers, weak, but secure. “Never, Yusuf. We-”

“Together.” Yusuf chokes, gasping and whimpering his way through a particularly grueling knit of bone, perhaps a rib finding it’s regrowth, Nicolò right there instantly, bending his head lower, letting their foreheads rest together awkwardly, neither of them wanting to see the mess below, drinking the scent of each other in. The one that permeated any blood, any dirt. The one they wrote in symphonies and carried in devotion.

“Only, only ever, together.” Nicolò breathes, Yusuf can feel it against his nose, into his hairline, across his eyes. If he tips his chin, he can catch, swallow, the life blood that belongs to he and Nicolò alone.

“Only I.” In peppered kisses to his brow, “Look to only I, there’s no wound, there, there, no wound can touch you, when I am here.”

“Only to you.’ Yusuf chokes, hating it’s roughness, soothed by the lips to his brow, “To you, only to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sick or Injured Prompt Fic. Originally posted 8th November 2020


	44. Private Laughter (Joe/Nicky)

Certain intimacies, certain moments, were only for them.

Joe never minded that they were a family unit. Entirely opposite; he loved it. He thrived in company, in love. There was nothing that warmed Joe’s heart, his soul, the true essence of his being like them all being a unit. A group that could count on one another, relish each other’s company, and provide and care for one another as they may need.

But, in the same _existence_ of that, there was Nicky. 

There was very little he and Nicky did not share with the family, exceptionally so. 

Nicky’s unbridled, unbroken, and true laughter was one of those things. The full bodied snorting, near gasping laughter, the kind that used his entire body and presence to bring to life, that dragged his eyes up into crinkles and illuminated his entire face. The drove those _glorious_ sounds of true, happy pleasure from him without a single care, _that_ was for them alone.

It hadn’t become so intentionally, Joe is entirely convinced it was an accidental sort of thing. He had never meant to reserve such a thing for only he.

Up until they’d met Andromache and Quynh, Joe had heard only the hints of such before. In rare moments when they’d become more aligned, transposing that fragile distance from enemy to lover, he would sometimes hear him laugh hard enough it sounded like a bark. But in most cases, he had a quiet, but no less loving laughter.

They’d been travelling as a quartet for half a decade the first time Joe heard it, and, at the time, it’d surprised Nicky as much as himself.

_It’d be raining, and hard. The ground was a slick, muddied pathway for miles, and Yusuf would be glad to feel dried boots again._

_Andromache and Quynh had gone off to a village some miles out for supplies, and would not return till that morning or the next due to the distance. Leaving himself and Nicolò to keep camp and hope to keep some of their provisions dry within the tent._

_Yusuf did not know what had gotten them chatting about youth-boredom, perhaps, both tucked under their blankets and furs, clothes laid out flat in their meager space, glad they’d been able to at least lay the tent over some skins to keep from being soaked when laying down. Outside, the rain continued to fall in steady pathways that made the softest sounds against their covered cloth shelter._

_He was talking animatedly, about some foolish exploit or another, eagerly amusing Nicolò with the intricate details of such things, when a particular story of how he’d tried to appear more well-read and impressive to some other family and had an unfortunate mishap with nearly setting his clothes on fire that had Nicolò snorting, head twitching against Yusuf’s chest._

_It silences Yusuf briefly, own eyes widening at the glorious, if fairly uncouth noise, Nicolò blushing hard enough that Yusuf can see it even in the minimal light their lamp provides._

_“Nicolò?”_

_He coughed, as if he’s trying to cover the sound. It seems both silly and endearing, there’s nothing Nicolò could do, not now, that could make him unattractive to Yusuf._

_“Perhaps your youthful foolishness is more amusing to me than I had entirely considered.” Nicolò mumbled against his chest, but there’s an open grin there that Yusuf can see, the blush near glowing. Yusuf harumphs, “Perhaps it be so, but I must admit curiosity, what part amuses you the most? For I do not find alighting ones clothing-near so as it was, entirely amusing. Or, perhaps now, but certainly not then.”_

_“You seem unbothered.” Nicolò hums, and he’s right, Yusuf had been laughing himself when telling the story, after all. “I can picture it, is all.” Nicolò continues. “Your face is a canvas, you make expressions I knew not existed until we met. There is an entire world, an entire universe that exists within your expressions, Yusuf, I only need to let my eyes close and imagine the outrage written across it.”_

_As he spoke, Yusuf had been running his fingers across Nicolò’s cheek, and the other man’s near nuzzling into it by the end of his little speech. “If I can draw a laugh such as that from you, I will make my face as many canvases as you desire.”_

As it happened, he’d not had to change a thing, of course. And it’s a good two hundred years later before Joe’d begun to notice that Nicky had never laughed that way with anyone else.

Still, it’s well into the 17th century before he mentions it. 

_They’d been having a night off, sitting tucked away into a tavern so crowded Yusuf is briefly relishing their overall invisibility to the crowd. A turn in the conversation drags a low snort from Nicky into his drink, and Yusuf turns to him, all wide-eyed grin and curiosity,_

_“You never laugh that way for anyone else, have you noticed?”_

_Nicolò raised his head from his beverage, frowning as if he has to consider it himself, “Never?”_

_“No, never. Not for Andromache, not for Quynh. I am the only one who has had the pleasure to hear it.”_

_A hand finds his thigh beneath the table, briefly squeezing. Yusuf smiles, bringing his forehead to rest alongside Nicolò’s. “Suppose I never considered it.” He admits, “Would you..I feel that, it was..I know not how to explain it.”_

_“Ours.” Yusuf says, simply, quietly, “It is ours.”_

_“Aye,” Nicolò agreed, relieved Yusuf brought his thoughts together. “Ours.”_

And now, in the 21st century and watching something on TV that Joe thinks is completely ridiculous and Nicky has called an ‘insufferable waste of time’, he makes an off handed comment to the improbability of the contest, and that snort follows, Nicky’s head tossed back, beautifully open and serene. Utterly, and completely awash in the delight that has always come with being at Joe’s side. And at Joe’s for the same.

Joe grins, laughing himself, reaching for the remote, but stopped by Nicky’s hand, the man still laughing. 

“Why torment ourselves further?” Joe asks, “When I can think of far better ways to make you laugh?”

Nicky’s grip slackens on his wrist just so. “Oh?” Those beautiful sea coloured eyes shiny, bright, so hopeful. “Whatever do you have in mind?”  
  
“When faced with a challenge, my love, I can always think of something.” Joe promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic, 'Nicky's snort laugh'. Originally posted 9th November 2020


	45. Distraction (Joe/Nicky)

One of the many benefits of being married to the same person for over 900 years was the security in knowing that said person sometimes knew what the other needed long before the person in question knew himself.

Joe was never more grateful for that then at times like this.

Honestly, if he was to think back, he’d not be able to pinpoint the start of it. He tended to be acutely aware of his own emotions, his needs and his desires. The same could be said of Nicky.

However, sometimes they knew one another better than they knew themselves.

In fact, Joe could hazard that they almost _always_ knew each other better.

At first, Joe didn’t think it was deliberate.

He woke up later than usual one morning, languid and slow. Relishing the fact that he’d had a full nights sleep and nowhere particularly pressing to be. Normally, Nicky would be up already, brewing coffee or tea and reading or doing a newspaper crossword. Small things to pass the time until Joe woke.

This morning, Joe wakes and Nicky’s still very much in bed. There is coffee, but it’s sitting on the nightstand, Nicky shirtless and gently massaging his fingers into Joe’s neck-something Joe imagined he’d been doing while Joe was still sleeping.

“What’s all that?” Joe asked, Nicky humming and not answering him.

“You seemed tired.” He says, finally, pressed by Joe’s curious gaze, “The cafe here opens early. It has the shot of vanilla you like too.”

“Do all cafe’s not open early?” Joe asked, forcing himself into a sitting position, Nicky moving to hand him the sweet smelling coffee. It had a very charming purple cup with white dots containing it, Nicky’d popped the lids opening, the smell already intoxicating.

“Drink your coffee, smartass.” Nicky said, Joe smirking and doing just that. 

–

Later in the week, they’d come back from doing some training, Joe moving to get the oil to clean his scimitar only to find it already all laid out for him, everything he’d need, even down to the clean cloths.

“Nicky?”

“I set it out before we left.” Nicky explained, like it was the most logical thing in the world. Joe sitting in the slightly too hard dining room chair, scimitar unsheathed in his lap, Nicky just across from him.

And well, of course it was to Nicky. Joe’s fond smiling remaining throughout the entirety of their silent, almost ritualistic cleaning.

–

It continued well into the next week.

Joe stepped out of the shower to the smell of cooking, wrapping a towel about his waist and attempting not to drown in the divine scent emanating from the small kitchen in the temporary apartment. Recognizing many of his favourite foods. One dish in particular Joe knew took several hours to prep. Another day, he’d been reading and fallen asleep on the sofa. Waking up to Nicky just coming back in from a trip to town, passing Joe a fresh charcoal set and new sketchbook. A beautiful, cord bound leather one, said leather dyed a dark blue.

“New tortillons too?” He questioned, carefully taking the purchases, rolling his fingers over the tightly bound paper.

Nicky simply kissed him and winked, vanishing to the kitchen.

–

Mid way into the third week, Joe was feeling more content and relaxed than he had in a long time. And he could tell Nicky was too. His tense shoulders hanging much looser beneath his shirt, neck cricking less in the mornings, and a gun further away than instant arms reach. Joe’d been feeling the same, and they walked through the mostly-empty street not quite touching, silent and content, taking in the different store fronts and odd car parked along the side of the road.

The silence was broken by only the faint traffic, the occasional dog and, suddenly, Nicky’s sneeze.

“Hmm?” Joe turned his head, “You alright?” 

They could heal fast, sure, but they were not immune to dust, cold or the odd nasal irritant.

“Yeah, I-” Another sneeze caught him off guard, Joe smiling faintly at the way Nicky’s nose scrunched up in distaste.

“Here.” Joe fiddled until he found a package of tissues buried deep in the depths of his coat pocket, holding one out. “What’s the superstition? Something about three in a row?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Nicky’s voice muffled by the tissue. Pausing his steps.

Joe stopped with him, shoulders bumping, watching the way Nicky was eyeballing a nearby bin with perhaps a bit _too_ much glee.

“Go on.” Joe grinned, a hand moving to Nicky’s lower back, already feeling his arm tense, “I know you want to.”

They’re about sixteen steps from the bin, a little too easy, Joe estimates.

So Joe tickles him just as he goes to throw. Catching him by surprise and delighting in the little squeak he gets. The tissue flying through the air, jolted by the messy throw.

It just makes it, Nicky turning a triumphant grin on him, spinning to face Joe, arms wrapping around his neck.

“My skills are immune to your sabotage.”

“So they are.” Joe laughed, bumping their noses together, drawing him into a kiss, “And I’d not have it any other way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic, 'Distraction'. Originally posted 12th November 2020


	46. Secrets (Joe/Nicky, Andy/Quynh)

“Andromache has a twitch.”

“A twitch? What sort of twitch?” Nicolò asked, lip already curling in amusement.

“If I run my finger, just so.” Quynh begins to describe, bringing her own index finger to the side of her chin, Nicolò watching as she drags the slowest pathway of it down her own neck, “She trembles, a fish caught on the wire.” 

The tavern is loud, jovial, and covers much of their conversation. Yet somehow, Nicolò feels there’s some oncoming scandal to it regardless. If only for the fire brimming in Quynh’s eyes. 

Yusuf and Andromache are not yet with them, he sits shoulder to shoulder with Quynh, catching a game of cards from the corner of his right eye, wondering what it’d be worth to bet on such a thing. Depending on how intoxicated the gaming party was.

Perhaps a waste, at present. And besides, Quynh’s still speaking.

She’s looking both smug and triumphant with this knowledge. Nicolò not having to wonder too hard of Quynh using this little tidbit to her advantage. “She gets so tense, so stressed. I take pride in relaxing her.”

“The worries of the world are a heavy burden to her.” Nicolò agrees, “She is not without her calms.”

“No, but none can calm her such as I.”

“That’s undisputed.” He points out, though it is mostly to relish in the way Quynh bristles affectionately beneath the praise. Smug and secure.

“Yusuf has no twitches.” Nicolò considers, “No, no twitches, but he growls. Not like the one you and Andromache are familiar with but..lower?”

He’s blushing, he realizes, a little ridiculous. They were forever in close quarters, there’s so little they don’t know of one another. But Quynh’s caught on, patting at his cheek affectionately. “You flush so readily, Nicolò. It is endearing.” 

“Hush.” There’s not heat to it, even leaning slightly into her touch, 

Movement by the tavern’s door shows the approach of Yusuf and Andromache, Andromache reaching the table first, Yusuf heading for the counter to inquire about the drinks. Nicolò bows his head to Andromache, standing to give her his seat, her fingers linger against his wrist as he moves beyond her, a silent ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ all in one, before Nicolò moves to greet his own lover, hearing Quynh shift to take her in at her side.

“I trust not that look.” Yusuf greets, accepting Nicolò into his space. He wishes he could greet him more properly, but there’s time for it later. Leaning slightly too close into Yusuf’s space as he can, bumping shoulder to elbow.

“What look is that?” Nicolò inquires, false innocence and smirking lips. “Surely, I know of nothing. I am but a beacon of ignorance, surely.”

There’s a low snort, Yusuf catching a look over Nicolò’s shoulder, to where Quynh and Andromache speak in hushed tones. “How do I not believe you?”

“Alas, anyone else would be fooled.’

“I take pride in being not one of them.”

“As you well should.” Nicolò says, “Were you keen on a drink this moment?”

He’s studying Nicolò’s eyes, the light sway of his hips, warming in turn. “I am sure that there will be no complaint if we take our leave.”

Nicolò’s gaze is a steady, darkening thing, raking slowly across Yusuf’s face, to where his beard almost disappears into his shirt collar, so high the neckline of cloth. He’s thinking clearly of biting it loose with his teeth, for the heat he delivers.

Yusuf shivers, turning the same time as Nicolò, to the door again. 

From behind, neither catches Quynh’s little wave, before she returns her own attentions to Andromache, who’s pressed along her side, thigh to thigh beneath the cover of the table.

“A shame, suppose we’ll have to go home late” Quynh purrs.

“How tragic.” Andromache smiles, something sharp and excited. “An evening with only you? What troubles can we possibly find ourselves in?”

Quynh’s press is none-to-gentle, when she presses her thigh into Andromache’s. “We’ll just have to find out, my love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fic, "Quynh and Nicky-Secrets". Originally posted 14th November 2020


	47. Cat (Joe/Nicky)

He’s carrying groceries back when he hears it. 

_Mew._

A pause and then,

_MEWRP-and something that may have been hissing._ Joe’s not sure, pausing and setting his groceries down gingerly against the pavement. He can make out the faintest sounds of scratching, coming from a street bin some five steps from himself.

Determined, and aware he might not even be successful, Joe strides to the bin and carefully pushes the lid half-off, the metal clanking with the furry being within pausing and lifting a dark black head up to Joe’s face. He’s surprised to see the creature doesn’t bolt, but stares at Joe as if to ask _“Excuse me, do you mind? Doing something here, Sir.”_

The cat’s offended look draws a wide grin from his face, Joe peering further down, wide green-gold eyes still staring, a dark black tail flicking beneath some discarded containers and other trash.

“Hello.” Joe greets, “Would you like some assistance?”

The cat _merps_ and Joe smiles, “I’m going to take this as a yes. I’m wearing a very big sweater, see?” Indicating his large orange and grey hoodie. “Come along.”  
  
Joe’s arms are only half in the bin before the cat leaps into them, drawing a surprised, delighted noise from Joe. 

“Someone is friendly.” Making him doubt the possibility of the cat being feral, or even a stray at all. “How did you end up in here?”

The cat snuggles into his sweater, tail swaying back and forth across his stomach and upper thigh. The cat’s all black, silky and hefty. “You’re no stray.” He chuckles, “Let’s see who you belong to.”

The area is a cluster of apartments, and the probability of finding the cats owner is high-but challenging. Using some deft maneuvers, Joe picks up his groceries in one hand, holding the content feline in the other.

–  
  
“Alright.” Nicky says, coming back inside some two hours later, the cat perched in Joe’s lap. Happy as can be. And well, Nicky can relate. “That’s the final sign, hopefully someone calls the number for the burner phone I gave.”

“I’m sure they will.” Joe comments, the cats loud purring near deafening in the small quarters, “After all, he’s very friendly, clearly loved.”

“Wonder why the cat has no collar, if he goes outside so much.” Nicky hums, thoughtful, “Or the little Houdini got it off.”

“Entirely possible, you know what sort of sneaky creatures they are.”

Nicky moves to sit beside him on the couch, the car arching his head up for pets. “What a friendly thing he is, so affectionate.”

“Well loved.” Joe says, “Can only be so.”

–

Four and a half hours go by, it’s nearing the middle of the night when they get a phone call from an apologetic woman, Nicky assuring her all is well. She’s positive that the cat is her granddaughters, and tells them that they live in a ground floor apartment about a block and a half out.

Nicky asks for a defining feature, just to be sure, and the woman tells them the cat should have a star-shaped pattern of grey and white on the underbelly, near the neck.

Joe lifts the cat and sure enough, there’s a pattern there exactly as she says.

“Alright then, looks like you’re going home.” Joe chuckles.

–

The cat purrs the entire walk home, snuggled into Joe’s chest. They only have to knock once before an elderly woman answers, a small girl with red eyes clutching her leg.

“Celestial!!” She almost shrieks, lifting her arms up while the cat happily detaches himself from Joe and returns to his loving young owner. The child half cries, half cradles him, her grandmother trying to thank them over her granddaughters cries.

“Thank you, so much. She adores him. He never gets out, but we had some people here delivering things and he must’ve gotten spooked.”

Joe smiles, Nicky brimming at his side, there’s only a slight smile, but Joe knows how content he is. “Our pleasure, good that he’s so friendly. Made things a bit easier.”

The child’s sat on the ground now, Celestial in her lap, purring and nuzzling her little face. 

The grandmother opens her mouth, but before she can offer anything as thanks, Joe cuts her off as politely as he can.

“Believe us, her happiness is more than enough. Have a good night, Ma’am.”

–

As they walk home, taking the signs down, Joe can feel Nicky’s warmth along his side, catching his gaze, Joe chuckles, bringing his hand down to lace his fingers against Nicky’s wrist.

“Celestial, huh?” Nicky murmurs, Joe chuckles, warm, soft and fond.

“Seems fitting, no?” Both looking to the ink-black sky at the same time, nestling their heads together.

After a moment, Nicky’s lips brush his, “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Fic, 'Joe: Cat'." Originally posted 15th November 2020


	48. Joe the Pirate (Joe/Nicky)

Nicolò would happily spend the rest of his immortal life at sea if meant this was what he got to see on the regular.

Yusuf is a marvel, standing just feet from him, working heavy rope between his hands, each movement of his fingers sending Nicolò further into a daze. He’s tied his hair back, but it’s messy at best, curls straying from the dark black cord any chance they get, framing his face and sticking to his forehead where near permanent mist and sweat plaster to his skin.

Nicolò tells himself he’s not slightly envious of the liquid, frowning down at his own work, some netting for fish, carried out by three other men close by. As if Nicolò has any sight for _them._

It’s been hot, the sun beating down at them relentlessly. While it’s a blessing considering how much storms can delay and wreck havoc upon the ship, it does nothing to help Nicolò from staring at the way Yusuf lifts himself to stand fully, wide white shirt half-clinging, half-billowing against his chest. It shouldn’t be _obscene._ He’s perfectly well covered by the shirt, half-tucked into short brown trousers that stop just beyond the knee. But the way his sleeves catch and roll at the elbow, the skin from his neck down to mid-chest where his beard stops..

 _‘Lord Almighty’,_ Nicolò thinks _,_ in highly begrudged with himself Italian _, ‘Get a hold of yourself’._

Yusuf, for his part, seems to be understanding of this, lowering his head to speak closer to Nicolò’s ear.

“Are you well, Nico?” The tone teasing enough that he knows the exact effect he’s having on his lover, and is utterly merciless and shameless with that knowledge. Nicolò shivers, and he has half a mind to shove Yusuf overboard until they both cool off.

He would never, of course, but the thought remains only further in his foresight when Yusuf leans even closer, picking up another end of the fish netting, “You know, here I am, innocently working, and you are so firmly beside yourself that you’ve flushed to your neck, hands loose upon this very netting.”

It’s a language the other sailors won’t recognize, that sits and _torments_ Nicolò ‘s ears, but he has to cough ridiculously to cover the low moan his throat would rather be uttering.

“It is not _my_ doing that you are there, holding rope and looking _sinful,_ Yusuf.” 

“Oh, I?” Yusuf smirks, ‘And what of you, with your stubble and that hair all askew? Curling just around your ears when you fail to tie or braid it? Showing me that tantalizing line of neck that, were I too lick just so-”

Nicolò nearly kicks him, shoving a handful of netting in his general direction, movements saying ‘spare me’ eyes saying, ‘please never stop speaking’.

Yusuf grins, taking the netting in both hands and yanking, making to work, the sun catches his cheeks, making Yusuf near glow and sending Nicolò further down his spiral, which is only saved by a shouted call to lift the net up.

Nicolò is safe _for now._

_–_

‘Safe’ lasts a few more days, until a storm forces them all below deck. They have nearly no privacy, and Nicolò is reconsidering his stance on them staying on a ship eternally.

Yusuf’s sitting across from him, knees bumping where they sit facing one another on stools. There’s a card game near their right, some people napping by their left, and nobody really tries to engage them in anything, so Nicolò is thus left staring while he and Yusuf pass the time. Yusuf sketching idly, Nicolò carving some wood into a shape he’s still deciding on with a small blade.

There’s companionable silence, the lanterns giving barely adequate lighting, but a ‘tsk’ from Yusuf draws Nicolò out of his silent carving reverie.

‘Hmm?”

“Ah, pencil, may I?” Indicating Nicolò’s blade, which he relinquishes readily, watching Yusuf put it to the tip and start to find some fresh lead, gently peeling away at the wood. Lighting strikes light the lower decks at intervals, and a particular catch of it across Yusuf’s face, shirt dry but wide open giving Nicolò a view of firm, flexing fingers, arm muscles sometimes shifting with the carving, Yusuf’s tongue pushing out at the corner of his lips.

It is ridiculous. Nicolò knows what he looks like. In every form of dress and undress he can think of, and yet he’s driven wild with the sight, crossing one leg over the other with a huff and pretending he doesn’t catch Yusuf’s wink as he hands the blade back.

–

Ages later, long off the boat and days from meeting up with Andromache and Quynh, Yusuf finds them a tavern to take residence in and pulls his scimitar from it’s sheath. Nicolò‘s brow furrows a moment-they haven’t the room to spar, but when Yusuf turns, shirt undone near to the stomach, half off his shoulders, hair falling where shirt stops Nicolò _feels_ himself losing the ability to think. An ability not at all aided by Yusuf taking two slow strides to him, using heat and deliberation to get Nicolò to back into the wall, scimitar’s point gently teasing the space between them.

“Well,” Yusuf asks, and Nicolò swears he feels the tip of the blade touch his chest, “We have some time,” Eyes positively glinting. Promise, challenge and adoration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fic. Originally posted 20th November 2020


	49. Can't Sleep Alone (Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set sometime in the 80's, so pre-cellphone days.

_01:34_

Twist. Roll over. Find some patterns in the ceiling. Curl around the pillow that’s a poor substitute. 

_01:46_

He could call him.

What time would it be where Nicky was now? They weren’t that far apart, but it’s enough that Joe feels both irritable and unfathomably exhausted.

_01:52_

Joe sighs again. There’s really no need for them to have been apart, but it happens. Separation can come with circumstance. Joe had been doing a work mission of surveillance, and it was too risky to send in more than one person. Even if his tiny barely-a-motel room feels hollow and empty.

His fingers are inches away from the motel’s phone, the lumpy pillow mocking him utterly, when a thought occurs to him.

What if he wasn’t where he was too be? They always have methods of finding each other, and they make sure of that. He’s aware he’s probably not thinking so logically, and while he slept okay the first two nights, today was quiet. And without so much work at the forefront of his mind, he’s left to lingered, wandering thoughts.

The alarm clock’s low red glare, faint, taunts him.

_02:13_

It’s silly. How much he misses him. His light red boxers feel too cool against his skin, the lack of body heat making him feel bereft.

A sharp, obnoxious ring jerks Joe from his thoughts, scrambling to grab the phone without even bothering to find a light. Joe’s voice groggy in the receiver.

“Hello?” He’s been awake, sure, but mobile connections do little justice for his voice.

“Sorry, uh, Mr. Jones?” The motel clerk sounds as bored and tired as he is. “Sorry but there’s a call coming in?”

Panic is first. The only people who should know Joe’s motel room usually wouldn’t be calling him on a mission. Even in it’s ‘off’ hours. “Okay.” Because what else could he say over the lump in his throat.

Static for a moment, then, “Joe?”

 _Fuck._ Even hearing Nicky’s voice is enough to soothe the raising tidal wave of panic he’d been working towards, ‘Nicky, are you alright?”

“Yeah, sorry I just.” He can hear him breathing, and Joe’s faintly aware Nicky didn’t ask if he woke him. It’s soothing, in a way, how Nicky just _knows._

“I know, me either.” Joe sighs.

“It’s ridiculous.” Nicky grunts, “We’re not in year one hundred or whatever, its not like this is fresh, but..”

Joe chuckles, letting his hand drop to his stomach, already, his skin feels almost warmer. A phantom sensation brought from the assurance of consistency. “It’s wrong.” Simple enough a statement. “You’re not supposed to be in another bed. Where I can’t reach.”

“No, I’m not.” Nicky sighs, Joe wonders if Andy is awake too or curled into her own bed in the other hotel. “Did you curl around the pillow?”

“Tried too.” Joe glances down in the dark, finding the abandoned pillow near his thighs, “A poor substitute. Unfathomably lumpy, and flat.”

“You’ve told me I have more bulk” A bemused tone filling Joe’s ears. God he misses him. 

“Among other things. How’s the wall serving you?”

“Terribly. It’s near the radiator. But I think it’s broken. It’s cold and flat.”

“A tragedy.” Joe laments, leaning further back into the bedding, hand out to seek a touch he knows he won’t find. Not right now anyway. “Tomorrow night, I think.”

“You have to sleep before then.” Nicky urges. “At some point.”

“So do you.” Joe retorts. “I’m sure we could think of something.”

“I told you in ‘67 and I’m telling you now, _phone lines are not sexy.”_

“I never said the phone was sexy.” Joe argues. “I said your voice is sexy, and so is the rest of you.”

He gets a tongue click in his ear that’s strangely loud. “But I can’t _see_ you, or _touch_ you.”

Endless romantic, Nicky is. Despite him claiming the opposite, ‘No Joe, you’re the romantic’.

(Joe argues they both are)

“You know my touch by now. If I recall, you’ve been able to enact it before in creative ways.”

“Yes, but you’re normally in the room.” The sigh loud and defeated, Joe rolling over again, gripping the pillow unconsciously. Shuffling tells him Nicky’s burrowing down, probably curling inward to give himself something to focus on.

“Listen to us.” Joe laughs, quietly, fond. “Acting like those newlyweds on television programs…”

“You _love_ those television programs. The cheesier the better.”

“I could be like _someone_ and addicted to cooking shows.”

“At least one can _learn_ something from those cooking shows.”

“Touché, touché.” Joe coincides defeat, “You never know, one could learn something from a good, dramatic script.”

“Joe, if Aunt Delilah’s herniated disc can be possessed by the ghost of her dead brother in law to sabotage her marriage to her second husband and claim the family fortune in milk stocks..”

“Never said it was a _worthwhile_ lesson.” Joe snickered, “Besides, Aunt Delilah was the one who went to that haunted house..”

There’s a _fwumph_ on the other end, silencing Joe a moment.

“Did you just throw a pillow at the phone?”

“It’s a close to you as I can get, consider it a rain check. I even aimed at the receiver.”

“How clever, your aim is impeccable as always.”

“Thank you, I’ve worked hard to hone this skill.” Nicky says, sounding mildly triumphant. Less from actual ego and more because he knows Joe loves the tone of voice he uses when he’s being smug. 

“I reap the benefits.” Joe yawns, suddenly, eyes feeling far heavier than they did before. On the other end, he can hear Nicky shuffling, yawning alongside him.

_02:57_

“Almost 3″ Joe comments, “Less than a day now.”

“Mm, can’t wait.” Nicky’s well and truly yawning now, struggling to stay awake. It’s not their ideal, but it works.

“You first?”

“Together.”

Of course.

They pause at the same time, unseen to each other, phones hovering close to the receivers.

“Good Night, Nico.” Joe whispers, low and soft.

“Love you, Yusuf.”

Joe’s heart clenches, soothed and warmed. “I love you, get some sleep.”

Nicky caves first, the phone clicking. Joe hardly remembers nothing after his own drops from his hand.

_03:09_

Soon, they’ll be together again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fic. Originally posted 21st November 2020


	50. Great Life Without Me (Andy, Nile, Joe/Nicky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst. Mortal Andy/dealing with mortality. Hopeful ending.

“Andy, no.” Nicky’s own voice is firm enough, but fuck if Andy doesn’t damned well know him well enough to hear the subtle hints of agony.

“I mean it.” It’s fruitless, fuck-no, futile? Words, whatever. She might even be drunk, who the hell knows. Or tipsy. Or on her way to getting drunk, but she _feels_ horrifyingly stone-cold sober.

Horrifying in the sense that her head is clear, clear enough that each thought is a razor blade to the chest, gripping and relentless. 

Funny, how ready she was to throw in the towel a year ago and be given a chance to do just that.

Fucking universe.

They’re in a hotel room, rain splattering it’s patterns against the window, lighting flashing through the curtains at intervals. There’s a bottle of scotch on the table but it’s hardly been touched. Making Andy doubt further her own possible intoxication. 

Sobriety, then, to have..what? This?

This maddening craziness? Staring into space and feeling every bone in her body ache for the last seven, nine, twelve hours? When it was nothing like so before? Pain faded. Or the still-lingering bruise where she’d tripped the other day?

Tripped, TRIPPED. She didn’t TRIP.

Someone moved the coffee table, or what have it. She’d wake foggy, groggy, head heavy and wondering exactly how she was supposed to function.

(She did, usually after one of the kind souls she was with brought her coffee but, still)

This chair makes her lower back ache and her head swims.

“You have to.’ Andy half-snarls, meeting Nicky’s tense expression across the way. He’s sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed, Joe pausing where he’d been re-arranging their suitcases near the dresser. Nile’s in the shower, but the waters long since been turned off.

“No”. Nicky says, again. She wants to fight, fuck she wants to fight. What else could quell the hammering nerves in her heart? The dull roar of unfamiliar anxiety in her ears?

“No, _nothing.”_ Her own voice edged, raw, surging up from the chair to cross the room. Nicky’s up the same second, meeting her half way just before she can grab his shirt, holding her wrist in mid air.

“Andy, _no.”_

Fuck him.

Joe’s moved too-of course he has, all but materializing at her side, shadowing the doorway she could bolt from.

_Assholes, she’ll kill them._

She would never, but the thought seems nice.

The bathroom door opens to the still hanging tension, Nile scanning the room questioningly, trying to settle upon the visage of the other three held stock still.

“Andy?”

Nobody moves, Joe glances to the side, nodding, Nile quickly adjusting her pj top and coming closer, Nicky’s fingers having switched their hold to a gentle rubbing, forcing Andy to relax.

“There is life, in the future.” He says, melancholic, ‘But that life is not the _same_ life without you, Andy. Yes, we’ll survive, we always do, but there will be no ‘forgetting’ there’s no ‘moving on’. We don’t _forget, **and you know that.”**_

She knows he’s right, goddamned fuck, but it _hurts._

She’s scared. She doesn’t want to leave them. She’s been here, in this spot, this presence, this _humanity_ for so long. And now..now it has an expiry date?

“You’re all I know, _we’re_ all we know.’ She’s not really a crier, but there’s a heavy thickness to her voice anyway. 

Joe’s moved, again, coming around behind her. It’s a haphazard tangle of body heat and limbs they know perfectly. Dragging her onto one of the beds and pushing himself into a sitting position aided by Nicky, creating their own nest. Andy finds her head near Joe’s heart against his chest, can hear it thudding steadily in her ear, Nicky half-drapped across her, Joe’s arm about her waist.

She is not crying, she absolutely is not crying. Nicky’s hand takes the back of her neck, and holds and she is crying but there’s nothing else to do. She was ‘older’ when she _died._ How much time does she even have? What of it all?All this time leading them, guiding them. Telling herself the world can be changed even a fraction should she just do SOMETHING. And now,

It’s gone?

What will they do without her?

(She knows they’ll carry on, but it’ll never be the same)

The world changes so fast, it’s nothing of how it was. Even for someone like she, someone who’s seen it damned near since humanity was conceived it is nothing like she can comprehend.

She misses and _misses_ and aches and _aches._

Joe’s arm is solid against her waist, heart still a soothing beat to her ear. It’s warmth she knows, recognizes and adores.

“I’m going to get old, or die tomorrow. And there will be nothing. I won’t be..there won’t be anymore _us,_ there won’t be anyone coming to, to..”

“We’ll never forget you.” Joe says, “We can’t. Nor can you ask such of us, you know you cannot do that, Boss..Andy, that’s not fair. Or possible. We’ll walk in your footsteps and know you’re there.”

_Would it not be easier if you did?_

_But we never forget, do we?_

_Lykon, Quynh, their ghosts hang heavy as reminders._

_Booker, a painful shadow in the dark._

“..Never like to make you cry.” She tells them, Nicky’s quietly huffing against her shoulder, Joe’s tears muffled into her head. 

The world feels so big, so massive, and they’ve always felt so small and yet, so large in it’s wake. So endlessly, endearingly and infuriatingly present. 

A dichotomy unlike any other.

The bed dips, Nile sinking to her knees upon it, reaching her own hand out to Andy’s arm. Speaking just loud enough to be heard over them.

“All of you have been immortal for so long, you don’t realize how it is to live otherwise.” She says, “Humans, everyday is an unknown. One shot, one chance. And in the blink of an eye, it’ll change. Humanity comes with no certainties, no guarantees, no promises. But here we remain, here we stay. We can live to be a hundred, we can live to be thirty. But living, that’s a day to day experience.”

Death is a looming presence of the humans day to day.

“So right now.’ Nile continues, knowing she has their attention by silence only saved by hitched breathing, “You live, and live. Survival has always been your way, and at the moment, you have time. Even with no guarantees, we can make it work, Andy. You have us, you always do.”

When nobody speaks, Nile feels she may have said something wrong, but if that’s the case, then she’ll try another tactic. She won’t let this hang as it is. 

“I can’t ask the impossible of you.” Andy finally says, somewhat muffled by Joe’s chest, “But I can wish for it.”

The truth is, she _knows_ they’ll carry on. That in time, her presence will become more mystical, more lingering than present, but she wishes there was just _some other way._

“Then don’t ask the impossible.” Nicky urges, “Ask us only to do what we all know is truth anyway.”

“Ask us, only to continue to love you.” Joe finishes, and everything just feels so heavy, but it has to be okay.

It has to be.

–

They all fall asleep like that, curled up with Andy in the middle, bookended and blockaded by Joe and Nicky, their arms linked across her body, Nile paces the room stealthily a few times, footsteps continuously light to avoid waking them.

Glancing down at her phone, she scrolls through a photo album she’s made of the things she see’s in their downtime, and a thought occurs to her, glancing back to the sleeping trio on the bed.

And then, she has an idea. Smiling into the low blue light.

Why, in the days of technology and innovation, should Andy just be a memory..?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fic. Originally posted 23rd November 2020


	51. Soulmate Tattoo's (Andy/Quynh)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not entirely sure what language Andromache and Quynh would have spoken to one another, to begin with. But we can safely assume the words on each others wrists are not written in English.
> 
> And yes, I did set this in the Old Guard verse, so it’s sort of less AU and I guess more..The Old Guard with fanon additions? Alt timeline? Alt style? But I am using the films timeline in that Quynh precedes Lykon.
> 
> Tl’dr: The Old Guard as we know, feat soulmates. And my personal “Quynh was never in the iron maiden” AU. And Andy is still immortal. Ok there’s all the bases enough babblings!

Finding Quynh brought Andromache a peace she never thought she’d know. A comfort she believed long gone from her tireless existence, dismissed, devoid and empty as it was. Canvasing the Earth, over and over, with no end in sight.

She woke up alone. Everyday. For how long? 

Counting time with the stars, and counting nights with passages of light.

Alone.

Even with war, battles, a lifetime where conflict and rage seemed to thrive and be brought upon the world by design, once there was Quynh, there was peace. At least in that the stars, the skies, no longer looked down upon her in their silent mocking.

“You are so far away.” Quynh’s serene, mildly grouchy sleep voice interrupting her thoughts. So many lifetimes passed, aside, behind them and before them. “I thought you sleeping, but your breathing is not steady enough.”

Andy blinks, slowly, eyes long adjusted to the dark, Quynh’s head pillowed against her stomach. “Sorry,’ Her voice barely above a whisper, a kiss to her head. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Thoughts like yours could wake the dead, Andromache.” Quynh huffs, making no move to sit herself up as she laces their fingers together. “What has you so lost?”

“Not lost,” Andy corrects, “Just..”

“Reverent?” Quynh suggests, finally pushing herself into more of a sitting position, choosing Andy’s lap as her chair, Andy’s arms finding her waist with ease. 

“Mm, that could be it. What has clued you in?”

At that, Quynh unlaces their fingers, finding Andy’s wrist instead, where the words seem to glow even in darkness. A band that wraps in mimicry of a bracelet.

_**“No! You are not real. You are a visage.”** _

Quynh had lamented in the past that she wished it was a touch more romantic, or at least ‘a little more flavourful, Andromache’. But Andy would only kiss her and remind her that all the heat, the fire of their relationship their love could come later.

_“You were starving and dehydrated, wandering a desert” Andy had said, “It’s a miracle you could speak at all.”_

_“That’s on the universe for doubting me.” Quynh had retorted._

Andy’s is not anymore romantic, in turn, mirroring Quynh’s movements to find Quynh’s own wrist, of black and gold against her skin.

_**“Oh, if only.”** _

_The words are like a constant reminder, and the two women had stared at each other across the desert as their wrists seemed to glow in unison, Quynh shouting at Andromache in confusion._

_When the words appeared, they stood, accusing one another of trickery. But Quynh needed food, water, shelter. And it was hard to keep up any sort of argument so weakened as she was._

_“The desert has brought its final tricks at last.” Quynh had exclaimed, wishing she had something sharp nearby._

_Andromache did, but she was not willing such an unfair fight. Even if denial was about the only thing on her mind._

_“I have been accustomed to this desert, and it lies at me like this now?”_

_Bickering got them nowhere, and Andy had food on her-and water. And giving it to Quynh had seemed the better choice of it all. Even if Quynh tested things as thoroughly as she could before taking them._

“Please, as if your brain screaming’s can ever be hidden from me.” Quynh said, comfortable on Andy’s lap in their dark room. “I only wonder why now.”

“Doesn’t really have a schedule.” Andy says, letting her fingers graze along Quynh’s wrist, Quynh doing the same with hers. “There are textbooks in schools that don’t go as far back as we do in their timelines.”

“Then such textbooks are missing out.” Quynh said, making Andy laugh as though she’d tickled her. “Come on, my love, it is so late.”

It was-the clock on one of their phones showing them as much, but she knew how Quynh could be, and that it was mostly in jest.

“This cannot be the same woman who has partied at clubs until the sun rises.” Andy said, hands loose where Quynh’s tanktop sits. Cotton, pleasant to the touch.

“It is, but _that_ woman was not peacefully sleeping before hand.” Tugging Andy until they could roll sideways, throwing her leg over Andy’s waist, nose to nose with her. 

“You know..” Andy said, after they’d lain in silence a few moments, carefully testing the waters of Quynh’s sleepiness, “We haven’t been to a club in a while.”

“Go to sleep and you might even get a dance.” Quynh yawned, already falling back into slumber.

“Oohh in the red outfit?” Andy asked, sure she could sense a closed eye-roll of ‘what else’.

“Red _and_ possibly leather.” Quynh’s arm tightening about her waist, leg drawing her inward further. And Andy’s own eyes grew heavy with the motion, catching the glow once more from her skin before finally falling to blissful sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt fic. Originally posted 29th November 2020


End file.
